Confidentiality and Informed Consent

Confidentiality and Informed Consent

Andrew Roberts

PSY/305

October 26, 2014

Sheila Rapa

Confidentiality and Informed Consent

In this paper we will look at something that has now changed in the psychology and counseling world. Confidentiality and informed consent have been the cornerstone in our practices. How can we expect those that we are trying to help and want to open up to us to do so if what they say can or may have legal implications against the patient. I have been asked to look at the decision of “Tarasoft versus the Board of Regents of the University of California”.

History of the case

In 1968 a student named Prsenjit Poddar attended the University of California and fell in love with a fellow student named Tatiana Tarasoff. When she rebuffed him he started stalking her, and when she left the campus for a time to do service work Poddar fell into a deep depression and was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. Poddar confided in his psychologist a doctor Lawrence Moore that he wanted to murder Miss Tarasoff. Mr. Poddar was detained, but then released a short time later stating that it was just talk. Miss Tarasoff’s and her family were never told about what had happened until after that October night when Mr. Poddar took Miss Tarasoff’s life. Her parents sued the school and the police for not warning them about Mr. Poddar’s intentions. The courts agreed with the Tarsoffs saying that we as psychologists have a duty not only to the patient but also to any and all individuals that their actions may affect. Poddar was convicted of second-degree murder, but his conviction was later over turned on a technicality. How a second trial never happened I still understand that but that is not what this case was really about. The question still is “How do we asses patients, and when is it right to let those who may be affected by what the patient may or may not do.

So how do we assess who maybe dangerous and who may not be dangerous? As stated in the reading “One...