Ethical confidentiality standards for police psychologists

Confidentiality for a Police Psychologist

Police psychologists are bound by the same ethical standards as are psychologists in any other situation. These ethical standards include a range of practices from not acting outside of one's scope of competence and treating each client with respect to rules about confidentiality. The rules concerning confidentiality are some of the most important of all of the ethical standards that concern psychologists because if a client does not have confidence that her or his concerns will be kept confidential then he or she will in most cases not feel free to talk about serious concerns and issues.

Laws and codes about confidentiality vary from state to state but in general psychologists can disclose information about a client in only a handful of cases. These include if the client reveals information about child abuse or neglect, about abuse or neglect of a dependent adult or neglect or abuse of a senior. If a client makes a specific threat against a named individual, a psychologist must also break confidentiality to warn the individual in question. A psychologist may break confidentiality if a client is suicidal (for example, to have the person placed in a mental hospital under an involuntary hold) but this is not a mandated breach of confidentiality. Records must be kept safely locked and can only be shared (with the client's permission) with insurance companies and (with a court order) with court officers.

A psychological evaluator, on the other hand, serves a very different function. Her or his job -- especially during a critical incident debriefing -- is to ascertain whether an officer is fit to return to active duty (or to desk duty). Thus information from a psychological evaluation will be shared with the officer's superiors. The psychologist must make it clear at the beginning of an evaluation that the information will be shared with the supervisors.

Question Two

Ideally, a pre-employment assessment will determine if an individual has the needed qualifications for a position. It should also -- and this is probably even more important -- determine if an individual has personality and psychological attributes that make him or her unfit for a position. (There are also certain physical attributes that might be screened for, such as vision acuity in a person who wishes to be a pilot. In general, however, ruling a person as physically unfit for a job must be down very carefully because of the protections given to each of us under the Americans with Disabilities Act.)

When screening a person to be a police officer, a screener (and the police administration who has asked for the screening, of course) will be primarily concerned with any psychological traits that might lead the police officer to be a danger to the public, to fellow officers, or to himself or herself. Tendencies to anti-social behavior (including but not limited to a diagnosis of Anti-Social Personality Disorder) should be taken seriously as such an assessment or diagnosis would indicate (assuming that it is accurate -- a complicated issue beyond the bounds of this answer) someone who is more likely than a more well-socialized person to act aggressively towards others.

Someone with an unstable personality or psychological core -- for example, someone diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder -- might also be assessed as less likely to be an ideal police officer since such an individual tends to be manipulative and untrustworthy, traits that run counter to the need that police officers have to be able to depend on each other.

Beyond specific mental health diagnoses, individuals should be screened for general traits such as honesty.

Question Four

An Latina officer who tells her psychologist that she is a lesbian brings up a number of clinical issues for the psychologist. Such an officer occupies at least a dual minority position in that she is a woman as well as gay. Depending on where this officer is working, she will probably also be a racial minority. (For example, in some departments in the Southwest she would be not be a racial minority.)

As a minority in a profession that often values conformity and traditional gender roles, this officer is likely to face a far-less-than-supportive working environment than if she were a straight man. (The fact that she is young is likely to exacerbate her position in an organization that values seniority. In addition to the formal authority granted to senior officers, there is the issue that a younger person generally has less confidence in herself -- or himself -- and so would be at greater psychological risk.) Thus many of the treatment issues that a psychologist would want to work with this officer would be ways in which to support her sense of self and to help her create a strong core of identity that would not be damaged by an unsupportive (or even hostile) work environment. (A psychologist is not permitted to give legal advice on sexual harassment but would be quite correct in referring the officer -- at her discretion -- to discuss her legal rights with the human resources department or a lawyer.)

Beyond addressing how her gender would affect her relationships with other officers, a psychologist would also want to help the officer come to a fuller understanding of her sense as a lesbian in a larger community (both Latina and general American) that will also often find her identity to be problematic. Helping this client understand the value of her authentic identity will be the psychologist's primary concern.