Abstract
Effective diagnosis and treatment in psychiatry depend on the doctor’s ability to collect information about the patient. This information is sometimes received directly from the patient, sometimes from medical records, and sometimes from the patient’s friends or loved ones. Some of the information the doctor accumulates could be embarrassing and damaging to the patient if communicated to a third party. At the same time there are many instances in which sharing of information about the patient with others can be extremely beneficial to the patient. It is, therefore, critical that the psychiatric physician have guidelines to help him judge when he can pass on information about the patient to others. These guidelines should cover the regulation of information that is in the doctor’s own head as well as in his medical records.
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Reference
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© 1980 Plenum Publishing Corporation
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Halleck, S.L. (1980). Confidentiality in Psychiatric Practice. In: Law in the Practice of Psychiatry. Critical Issues in Psychiatry. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-7893-8_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-7893-8_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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