Psychologists have ethical duties to maintain client privacy, including with online platforms.

Online mental health platforms may provide convenience and clinical benefits.

Online platforms can also create privacy and security risks.

Before sharing information, patients should ask how it will be collected, protected, and disclosed.

When patients share personal information with healthcare or mental healthcare providers, those providers have ethical duties to maintain the privacy and confidentiality of the information they collect (ACA, 2014; AMA, n.d.;. APA, 2017; NASW, 2021). Professionals covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Protection Act (HIPAA, 1996) also have legal duties to safeguard personal health information. Privacy and confidentiality may be particularly important for patients concerned about mental health stigma, embarrassment, workplace discrimination, or other potential consequences of disclosure.

A recent case, Santoro v. Tower Health, illustrates the privacy concerns that can arise when patients communicate with providers through websites. A group of patients alleged that a healthcare system’s use of Meta Pixel—a tracking technology—shared identifiable health with Meta, a large social media company, for advertising and other commercial purposes. The patients claimed that these practices violated their privacy rights.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for Third Circuit ultimately dismissed the case, finding that the pleadings were not sufficiently specific. While the court did not actually decide whether the sharing of information violated patient privacy laws, the case does raise interesting issues for patients who are asked to share personal information on their providers’ websites.

This post explores related issues from the perspective of mental health patients who receive requests from their psychologist to submit information electronically as part........

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