Confidentiality for a Police Psychologist

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 Three

The most important thing that a police psychologist should do when evaluating an officer for a position on the SWAT team is to inform that individual that the information that the officer reveals to the psychologist (and any conclusions that the psychologist comes to) will be shared with the officer's superiors for the purpose of determining if the officer can join the SWAT team. The psychologist is bound to reveal only the information that is directly relevant to the specific evaluation. Any other information must be kept confidential.

In a related vein, the psychologist should keep the assessment as focused as possible to the question at hand and not use the session to "go fishing." Issues that are directly relevant to such an assessment would be how stable the person is emotionally and psychologically, how prone the person is to explosive again, how well the person can work in a team (which includes how reliable and trustworthy the individual is). Also key to the assessment would be how well the person deals with stress.

Someone who would be a good member of the SWAT team would be someone who has very good communication skills. This is important both in terms of how well that individual can communicate with other members of his or her team and in terms of how well that individual can communicate with suspects. (This latter is important because SWAT members might have to serve as hostage negotiators before a formal negotiator could be summoned.)

Finally, the assessor would want to determine how well the individual could balance the ability to be a leader with the ability to take orders.

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.)