1. Sign up securely online.
2. Read/watch articles & videos.
3. Submit evaluation & post-test.
4. Print your certificate.
Course Materials:
GENERAL COURSE DESCRIPTION
The Internet and social networking are offering a number of new clinical and ethical challenges for those who provide face-to-face mental health services. These challenges include extra-therapeutic contacts between therapists and their clients, questions about what distinguishes personal and professional activities online, and a lack of clearly developed policies related to our online behaviors and interactions.
This unique and first-of-its kind course offers an introduction to digital ethics and to various social networking sites and activities and provides guidelines for how to manage the concerns that may arise for practitioners who are using these sites. Applicable ethical standards will be addressed. While this course focuses on issues that may be of concern to clinicians who provide online therapy and who also maintain a presence on social media sites, online treatment is not specifically addressed in this course.
The first section of the course is an Introduction to the clinical and ethical issues that get raised for psychotherapists using Social Media. The second section addresses online transparency of both clients and therapists, inclusive of what therapists may intentionally or unintentionally make available online, and whether they should access client information online. Section three looks at friend and contact requests on sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and also examines the challenges of Facebook business pages and the blocking feature on such sites. The fourth section addresses Twitter, Status Updates, and Location-based check-in sites. The fifth section discusses the ethical issues that are raised by consumer review sites and business listings. Section six focuses on email exchanges between therapists and clients, record keeping, and digital security. Section seven provides sample Social Media Policies, and section eight, the last one, includes links to ethics codes for psychotherapists, and additional online resources.
These challenges include extra-therapeutic contacts between therapists and their clients, questions about what distinguishes personal and professional activities online, and a lack of clearly developed policies related to our online behaviors and interactions.
