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Is it ok for my child and I to see the same psychologist?
Conversation started by nerida_l
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My daughter and I have been seeing the same psychologist since 2010 and have had terrific progress.
My child is now 5 and I sourced help to assist her attend supervised visitation with her father. She suffered a severe emotional breakdown after a visitation session with her father and has not been back to date.
Recently my ex partner has made accusations that my psychologist is biased and my illness has been passed on to our child. I suffer from depression and anxiety which stems from a break up with my daughters father. Our psychologist says that our files are separate, and she deals with us separately.
Is there anything wrong with a practitioner seeing more than one family member? I found it extremely difficult to source a psychologist to begin with and both my daughter and myself have a wonderful trusting bond with our psychologist.
I understand that GP's can see the same family members without judgement, am I doing the wrong thing? -
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Thanks
Dr Carla Rogers
Psychologist
Are you ready to make some changes? I don't have a magic wand, I can't fix all your problems, and when we work together you're … View Profile
Hi, thanks for your question.
This is not a simple cut and dried answer, so bear with me.
As a psychologist, we have to operate under the Australian Psychological Society's Ethics guidelines. One of these guidelines deals with provision provision of services to multiple clients (for e.g. in a family case such as yours). Some psychologists are happy to do this, and some are not. For example, I would also be happy to see both of you as your psychologist has done because it's a little less ‘messy’ when one of the clients involved is a small child.
The difficulty of dealing with multiple clients comes into play when the psychologist is in a position where being impartial or maintaining confidence becomes problematic. For example, if I see a husband AND a wife but as individuals (not couples counselling), it may become difficult for me to maintain impartiality if I hear something from one party that severely impacts the other party whom I am also seeing. I suggest that in your case this is unlikely to happen.
Treating multiple clients does not violate the code of ethics, as long as they explain to each client the limits to confidentiality in advance; give clients an opportunity to consider the limitations of the situation; obtain clients’ explicit acceptance of these limitations; and ensure as far as possible, that no client is coerced to accept these limitations.
As long as you are aware of the limits of confidentiality when a psych treats multiple clients then it's not a huge drama at all - and even less so when the other person is your young child.
Hope this helps to answer your question.
Carla
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