Social Media Policy This section outlines our office policies related to the use of Social Media. Please read it to understand how we conduct ourselves on the Internet as mental health professionals, and how you can expect us to respond to various interactions that may occur between us on the Internet. If you have any questions about anything within this document, we encourage you to bring them up when we meet or to contact us at arch@archpsychological.com. Our Professional Pages on Social Media We have professional pages on various social media sites and use social media to provide general information and education only. Our social media sites are not intended to be treatment or advice. If you are interested in accessing general information about us and the practice of psychology please feel free to check out our professional social media: Facebook: ARCH Psychological Services LinkedIn: ARCH Psychological Services You are under no obligation and there is no expectation for you to look at these resources. If you choose to read these resources, we welcome you. Friending and Following With our Social Media Policy, we would like to encourage you to be a conscious consumer, preserve our relationship, protect your privacy and safeguard your confidentiality. We also want to ensure transparency about the differences between our clinical (our work with you as a client) and non-clinical work (our contact via social media, digital platforms, etc.). We encourage you to be aware of what you disclose on any digital platform and to keep in mind that your actions on social media may share personally revealing information about yourself in public. Our primary concern is our client’s privacy. Therefore, our clients are welcome to view our profiles and read content shared on social media posts from those profiles, but we do not accept a friend or follow requests from current or former clients on any social networking site (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc). We believe that adding clients as friends or followers on these sites can compromise your confidentiality and our respective privacy. It may also blur the boundaries of our therapeutic relationship. Use of Search Engines We do not follow or search for current or former clients on social media. We believe casual viewing of clients’ online content outside of the therapy hour can create confusion in regard to whether it’s being done as a part of treatment or to satisfy personal curiosity. In addition, viewing your online activities without your consent and without our explicit arrangement towards a specific purpose could potentially have a negative influence on our working relationship. If there are things from your online life that you wish to share with us, please bring them into our sessions where we can view and explore them together, during the therapy hour. Extremely rare exceptions may be made during times of crisis. If we have a reason to suspect that you are in danger and you have not been in touch with us via our usual means (coming to appointments, phone, or email) there might be an instance in which using a search engine (to find you, find someone close to you, or to check on your recent status updates) becomes necessary as part of ensuring your welfare. These are unusual situations and if we ever resort to such means, we will fully document it and discuss it with you in our next session. If you have questions about this, please bring them up when we meet and we can talk more about it. Interacting Please do not use SMS (mobile phone text messaging) or messaging on Social Networking sites such as Facebook, or LinkedIn to contact us. These sites are not secure and we may not read these messages in a timely manner. Recording and posting sessions on social media is not allowed. If a client is spotted recording, a session will be terminated. The only exception when we record sessions is for educational purposes of our staff, for later reviewing and learning, but we only do that with informed written consent. Once those activities are completed, we delete recorded material. Please keep in mind that activities such as liking, sharing, following, etc. on our pages or our posts on our social media profiles are publicly visible to other users and can also expose your personal information. So, please do not use Wall postings, @replies, or other means of engaging with us in public online if we have an already established client/therapist relationship. Engaging with us this way could compromise your confidentiality. It may also create the possibility that these exchanges become a part of your legal medical record and will need to be documented and archived in your chart. If you need to contact us between sessions, the best way to do so is by phone. Direct email at arch@archpsychological.com is second best for quick, administrative issues such as changing appointment times. See the email section below for more information regarding email interactions. Our website contains public information for you about our clinical services. The website offers a "Contact Us" page that allows you to send a message to us. Business Review Sites You may find our psychology practice on sites which list businesses. Some of these sites include forums in which users rate their providers and add reviews. If you should find our listing on any of these sites, please know that our listing is not a request for a testimonial, rating, or endorsement from you as our client. The American Psychological Association’s Ethics Code states under Principle 5.05 that it is unethical for psychologists to solicit testimonials: “Psychologists do not solicit testimonials from current therapy clients/patients or other persons who because of their particular circumstances are vulnerable to undue influence.” Of course, you have a right to express yourself on any site you wish. But due to confidentiality, we cannot respond to any review on any of these sites whether it is positive or negative. We urge you to take your own privacy as seriously as we take our commitment of confidentiality to you. You should also be aware that if you are using these sites to communicate indirectly with us about your feelings about our work, there is a good possibility that we may never see it. If we are working together, we hope that you will bring your feelings and reactions to our work directly into the therapy process. This can be an important part of the therapy, even if you decide we are not a good fit. Confidentiality means that we cannot tell people that you are our client and our Ethics Code prohibits us from requesting testimonials. But you are more than welcome to tell anyone you wish that you are using our psychology services or how you feel about the treatment we provided to you, in any forum of your choosing. If you do choose to write something on a business review site, we hope you will keep in mind that you may be sharing personally revealing information in a public forum. In case you may not feel comfortable speaking about your service experience directly to your mental health professional, you can contact the management of the ARCH Psychology Services at arch@archpsychological.com. Location-Based Services If you used location-based services on your mobile phone, you may wish to be aware of the privacy issues related to using these services. If you have GPS tracking enabled on your device, it is possible that others may surmise that you are a therapy client due to regular check-ins at our office on a weekly basis. Please be aware of this risk if you are intentionally “checking in,” from our office or if you have a passive LBS app enabled on your phone. Email We prefer using email only to arrange or modify appointments (as a second option, if you can not reach us via phone) or for administration purposes. Please do not email us content related to your therapy sessions, as email is not completely secure or confidential. If you choose to communicate with us by email, be aware that all emails are retained in the logs of your and our Internet service providers. While it is unlikely that someone will be looking at these logs, they are, in theory, available to be read by the system administrator(s) of the Internet service provider. You should also know that any emails we receive from you and any responses that we send to you become a part of your legal record. Conclusion Thank you for taking the time to review our Social Media Policy. If you have questions or concerns about any of these policies and procedures or regarding our potential interactions on the Internet, please bring them to our attention so that we can discuss them.