Last year, I described my experiences trying to renew the digital certificate which enables this site to process data securely. Having battled with a company called RegisterFly, I wound up having a very pleasant experience with GoDaddy. Now a colleague who works in clinical trials has passed on news that the company I battled with was so bad it has actually been stripped of its ICANN accreditation. Caveat emptor!
The BACP has asked that individual practitioners’ names be removed from an article published on this site which recounted the details of a violation of client confidentiality by a group of online therapists. While throwing out the majority of claims in a complaint brought by those individuals, and recognizing that the publisher of this site was ethically bound to challenge the incompetence or malpractice of other practitioners, the BACP has deemed that the publisher erred by individually naming those responsible for the violation.
Sometimes online therapists violate the confidentiality of their clients — and sometimes the field lacks adequate protections for the well-being of those clients. That, unfortunately, is one conclusion of an article we published recounting the facts of how a group of six self-proclaimed ‘experts’ in online therapy exposed confidential client information on a major web portal. The BACP has upheld our decision to publish this information, provided that the identifying details of relevant professional bodies and those responsible for violating client confidentiality are removed.
The ISMHO’s ad hoc handling of evidence that one of the organization’s founders inadvertently published confidential client material on a public website without consent, and the subsequent expulsion of the whistleblower, highlight several constructive opportunities for improving and reforming the ISMHO and bringing a more explicit ethical component to its management. This document outlines seven suggested principles for raising the standard of ethical and competent management within the International Society for Mental Health Online.
Two weeks after well documented facts were published indicating unethical behaviour by an ISMHO founder, the mental health organization’s board of directors has formally expelled the whistleblower for activities contrary to the best interests of ISMHO — i.e., for telling the truth. The result of the board’s secret deliberations comes just days after board members misled the ISMHO membership, claiming the APA had found that no unethical behaviour had ever occurred.
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