The Therapy Patients’ Bill of Rights

Read original post at Therapy Soup to see scintillating comments or below.

The American Psychiatric Association and others adhere to a mental health bill of rights,  which is important for every patient/patient’s advocate and mental health/addiction professional to read. The bill is comprehensive but quite legalistic in language and content, so we decided to create a list of some practical and relatively easy-to-put-into-practice patient rights, some of which are based on the good work of the APA.

No matter what methods or techniques your therapist uses, there are universal recommendations for the process of therapy.  In themselves, these are not revolutionary in the least, but when taken in context of what some views of accepted practice are, they may very well be. Also, it’s important to note that there are exceptions to every rule and not all of these rights may be applicable in every situation.

In honor of National Mental Health Month, here’s our user-friendly Therapy Patients’ Bill of Rights:

1. A therapy patient has the right to know their therapist’s credentials, experience, and professional background. 

2. A patient has the right to ask any therapist their outcome rates. These rates are determined by doing follow-up tracking with a reasonable percentage of patients after they leave therapy to see how they are maintaining. One year follow up is ideal. Outcome rates (successful or not), should be made available to all potential patients/clients upon request but of most use to the patient are outcome rates that are specific to the patient’s disorder.

3. A therapy patient has a right to receive a comprehensive and thorough psychosocial evaluation/history.

4. A therapy patient has a right to a diagnosis and prognosis at as early a stage of therapy as possible. Additional experts including, but not limited to, psychiatrists, addiction specialists, and so on may be required to assist the therapist in reaching a diagnosis.

5. A therapy patient has the right to a written treatment plan that should be created together with the therapist and utilized, with necessary amendments and changes, throughout the course of therapy.

6. A therapy patient has a right to understand the costs of individual therapy sessions and projected costs of total therapy sessions upon request, before committing to a course of therapy.

7. A therapy patient has the right to a beginning, middle and an end to therapy. If protracted or ongoing therapy is required, then the patient has the right to understand why their diagnosis might warrant this course of action.

8. A therapy patient has the right to expect to achieve specific goals and objectives by agreed-upon target dates.

9. A patient has the right to have his or her own treatment responsibilities explained thoroughly as well as understand the therapist’s responsibilities to the therapy process and to the patient. This includes the responsibility of the therapist to try a different course of treatment and/or refer patients to another therapist if therapy is ineffective after a reasonable period of time.

10. A patient has the right to complete confidentiality as provided for by state and federal laws and regulations.

11. (Submitted by TPG)  A therapy patient has the right to review and copy his or her patient records to the fullest extent permitted by the applicable Federal and State law. If under the law the therapist is not required to release the applicable records to the patient, but must, if the patient requests, release to a third party of the patient’s designation, the therapist must inform the patient of that fact

12. (Submitted by Makeitplainonline) A patient has the right to terminate treatment at any time if they feel dissatisfied in any way. (I think too many clients stay in therapy for long periods of time with therapists they feel bullied and badgered by, or simply feel that they are not getting anywhere. They need to know they can say no, enough is enough)

Did we leave out any essentials? Do you have an addendum? Should we get rid of anything? We want to hear from you!