You will be treated with dignity and respect. Your clinical psychologist will carefully listen and help you to understand and change the difficulties that you may be facing. You will receive honest and professional assistance, advice and/or treatment.

You can change your psychologist at any point in time, and you can see a different psychologist before deciding who to keep seeing. However, it is usually helpful to talk to your psychologist about your plans to see someone else.

Confidentiality

During therapy your psychologist must respect your privacy. Clinical psychologists are bound by ethical guidelines that generally prevent them telling any third person what you have said to them without your consent. However, there are some exceptions to this rule. The most important is that, if the psychologist believes you or another person may be in danger (e.g. they think you may harm yourself, harm someone else or be harmed) they can tell other relevant people even if you say they can’t. They may also talk to their supervisor about what you tell them, but can usually do this in a way that avoids identifying who you are.