Anonymous #15 said:
This is a BS troll thread. Stop feeding it.
Probably, but since most of the replies are wrong: there are two separate issues here. One of confidentiality (an ethical issue) and one of privilege (a legal concept). There is no (specific) federal law on this, it depends heavily on your state laws and especially your specific circumstances. Both privilege and confidentiality are held by you, the patient, and except for specific legally defined circumstances the therapist is bound to not discuss your confidential information or even confirm that you're a patient.
Confidentiality: Most states allow a doctor to break confidentiality and inform police or other appropriate persons about threats of violence to yourself or others, threats or evidence of child abuse, or a reasonable beliefe that one is unable to adequately care for oneself. Some states will require it ( "mandatory reporting" ) in some or all of those circumstances. As this relates to selling drugs specifically I do not believe it can be reasonably interpreted to fall under any of the mandatory or optional reporting situations with which I am familiar unless you're talking about kids, since child abuse can be a pretty broad term. Confidentiality is broken (but reporting is usually not mandated unless it falls under one of the above categories) if you attempt to use your therapy "in furtherance" of your crimes, but merely discussing something illegal doesn't break confidentiality.
Privilege: However, as some people have said, it is still unadvisable to discuss ongoing or future illegal activity as it may be confidential but not privileged ( ie. your therapist could be compelled to testify regardless of your claim of confidentiality ). There aren't many situations in which this will happen - the prosecution would have to show some kind of relevance (without being able to see the actual records they're seeking) and convince a judge it would be worth violating confidentiality to force the therapist to testify - but better safe than sorry. Discussion of past illegal activity is privileged and therefore not admissible as evidence.
Again, the patient holds the privilege or confidentiality personally, the therapist cannot usually break it. It does not weaken privilege if the therapist consults with a colleague about your case. Generally ethical rules require such consults to not identify the patient but either way the information remains privileged and the privilege remains the patient's. It does not weaken privilege if you discuss the same topics as you have done in your therapy with other people BUT, and this is a big but, if you discuss the therapy session with someone who is not your therapist, and with whom you do not expect to share confidentiality, that session is no longer privileged. Persons with whom you can expect to share confidentiality would include priests (but only in their role as confessor, and apparently not in prison), your lawyer, another therapist or doctor (whom you employ personally, court ordered therapy is not strictly confidential) or your spouse (but only to the extent of ordinary spousal privilege - others cannot be present etc.)
(IANAL, nor did I sleep in a Holliday Inn Express last night - Your state laws will very widely on this so take it all with a few grains of salt)
Edited by Anonymous (08/16/12 11:46 AM)
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