Therapists Using Social Media

Therapists Using Social Media

Running Head: SOCIAL MEDIA CHALLENGES FOR THERAPISTS 1

SOCIAL MEDIA CHALLENGES FOR THERAPISTS 5

Social Networking Challenges For Therapists

California Southern University

PSY:87991

February, 2019

Introduction

Social networking is one of the modern powerful communication tools that are being used to achieve business as well as personal goals in life. Despite being a strong tool for the modern society, social media networking can equally be misused or even abused to cause damage to others. Portable or mobile devices such as phones allows people to remain well connected through social media platforms. For instance, businesses are using social media platform such as Facebook as a marketing tool to reach out to target consumers. The use of social media sites such as Facebook has become more popular in almost every sector of the economy due to weak or lack of strict regulations like other conventional methods (Kolmes).

Although social media networking has revolutionized communication and human interactions, professional therapists have not fully embraced the approach due to limitations imposed by professional boundaries. The use of social networking by professional therapists raises ethical issues. As a result,professional therapists are always faced with the dilemma on whether they should own social media accounts or not. Where the professionals open social media accounts they face the challenge of developing social media or online policy to guide them on the use without violating professional standards or boundaries. This paper will explore on the use of social media networking by professional therapists and the challenges faced by the professionals in their quest to use the new communication approach to achieve their professional goals (Chernack, 2010)

Background Information

With ever increasing movements of social networking and e-patients/providers, communication between people hs been made easier. Many professions if allowed would embrace the new approach to offer their services to clients. Although social media networking has made communication and interaction easy, many of the professional therapists are not enjoying the benefits due to fear of violating professional boundaries. It is normal for each of us regardless of the profession to accept friend requests sent to us on social media sites but professional therapists friend request are not treated the same.

Many of the professional therapists are left scratching their heads when they receive friend requests from their clients or former clients. The dilemma in this case involves how to respond to the request. Professional regulations governing professional therapists require that the professional clearly defines the kind of relationship that they establish with their clients. Professional boundaries are not only observed in offline situation but also in online situation as well. Online client’s engagements further raises more of ethical concerns that must be evaluated by all professional therapists before clicking the button to accept requests or respond to messages sent by the clients.

Some of the ethical concerns that bother professional therapists include; dual relationship, information confidentiality, privacy, conflict of interest’s, informed consent among other issues that may result into violating the set guidelines for the professionals. Currently American Psychological Association does not offer guidelines on how to handle the issues thus creating operational dilemma for therapists professional. Lack of clearly defined regulations on social media use have left professional therapists with the responsibility of developing their own social media or internet and email policies. The policy is then shared with clients during the first session of engagement (Scarton, 2010)

The policy plays a vital role in informing clients whether the professional accepts patient’s friend requests on social media sites or not. In the event the professional accepts the emails or friends requests the policy clearly indicates the conditions that must hold. Developing the social media and online policy for professional therapists remains a bigger challenge for many to handle. For instance a professional therapist may include certain conditions that allow them to accept client’s emails and friend requests and end up being interpreted wrongly by the clients than what it what it was intended to achieve.

To avoid unwanted violation of professional boundaries many professional therapists embrace the safest approach of keeping clear boundaries as with physical engagements online. The safest approach includes avoiding or declining client’s friend requests as well as emails. Professional therapists have to ensure that they set strong policies for themselves and make them well understood by their clients to avoid future misunderstanding or going beyond the set professional boundaries.

References

Chernack, K. B. (2010, September/October). Professional Boundaries in a Virtually Boundary-less E-environment. Retrieved February 26, 2019, from http://www.naswil.org/news/networker/featured/professional-boundaries-in-a-virtuallyboundary-less

Kolmes, K. (n.d.). A Psychotherapist’s Guide to Facebook and Twitter: Why Clinicians Should Give a Tweet. Retrieved February 25, 2019, from Psychotherapy.net: http://www.psychotherapy.net/article/psychotherapists-guide-social-media

Scarton, D. (2010, March 30). Google and Facebook Raise New Issues for Therapists and Their Clients. Retrieved February 25, 2019, from Washington Post,: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/29/AR2010032902942.html.