I’m back from SXSW, where I got rained on HARD and also got to network and socialize with some of my favorite people. My session was on the challenges raised by consumer reviews of healthcare providers. You can read the Storify story of tweets below.

Thanks to everyone who came and asked great questions!

Check out the audio from my segment of our presentation:

My slide:

You can also hear the full audio here, and view the Storify tweets below.

Tweets from SXSW session WARNING: Are Online Reviews Bad for Your Health?

Session moderated by Cindy Cohn, Legal Director of EFF. Panelists: Jeffrey Segal, CEO of Medical Justice, Dr. Keely Kolmes, SF Psychologist in private practice, and Vince Sollito, VP at Yelp.

Storified by Dr. Keely Kolmes · Mon, Mar 12 2012 14:21:29

I’ve created a very brief survey to gain a better idea of the types of information that would be most useful to psychotherapy clients when looking at online reviews of mental health professionals.

This survey consists of three questions and can be easily answered in just a few minutes. I do not ask for any personal information about you.

Please help me by taking a couple of minutes to complete the survey and also sharing it with your friends.

The survey can be found here.

Thanks so much for your help.

In 2009, I did a presentation at SXSW called Therapy 2.0: Mental Health for Geeks, even creating a corresponding wiki with resources. A month later, I spoke at the first Mental Health Camp for bloggers in Vancouver on the intersection of social media and mental health.

Looking back, it seems ironic that I haven’t written much since then about mental health or mental illness in tech culture especially when I consider that a large proportion of the people who seek my help have careers in tech. It’s as if I’ve forgotten that it’s worth mentioning.

And it’s really not.

Prodded by the recent suicide of Ilya Zhitomirskiy, one of the co-founders of Diaspora (a site, I had eagerly awaited due to multiple privacy failings on the part of Facebook), Violet Blue wrote a great post about called Tech’s Relationship With Depression, Suicide and Asperger’s. I share many of Violet’s concerns and she interviewed me for this article which includes a number of my comments.

Our friends and family in tech culture may suffer and struggle in ways that we may not see or just may not know how to identify. It’s hard to get someone the help they need when you don’t know they are suffering or if their coping or personality style involves masking their pain.

It’s not that people in tech are so special or different from anyone else, but working in the digital realm does involve the pressures of internet attention, visibility, or “celebrity,” which can sometimes be unexpected and overwhelming. Others may not realize that their normal ways of coping keep them isolated and deprived of support. I hope people will check out Violet Blue’s post which provides links to APA and NIMH’s resources for depression and suicide.

And if you or someone you know needs help, find a professional who you can talk to about your stress. There are low-fee options in every city. College counseling centers and counseling, psychology, or social work training sites may be good places to look for low-fee options. Larger sites such as APA’s Psychologist Locator and Psychology Today provide listings for private practice clinicians.

But whatever you do, talk to someone and let them know that you need some support. There is no need to suffer in silence. People are there to help you, and if you are thinking of taking your life, know that you will leave behind people who will miss you and who will wish they could have reached out to help.

In addition to seeing clients in my private practice, doing research, and teaching, I am also the Digital Director for APA Division 42, Psychologists in Independent Practice.

We’ve just completed a Youtube video on the benefits of talking to a psychologist, and I’m pleased to share it here. Please do pass it along if you think it may help someone.

On Saturday, March 19, The New York Times published an Op-Ed I wrote on some of the concerns I have with consumer review sites when it comes to finding and rating mental health services. I appreciate those who took the time to kindly offer their comments on the piece both on the Times page and via email.

Those who only read the title The Wrong Kind of Talk Therapy or tag line (both written by the Times and not seen by me until the piece ran), may have gotten the false impression that I am against online reviews. I am not. But these sites do need a significant upgrade when it comes to reviewing health care services.

What struck me from the comments is the pain and frustration experienced by consumers of mental health care. Many expressed powerlessness and confusion when it comes both to finding good care and to understanding the process of psychotherapy. Such comments made it clear how important it is for mental health professionals to provide better information to demystify what it is that we do, how we work, and how we can help. It is also incumbent on mental health practitioners and organizations to let consumers know what they can do when they feel that something harmful has occurred in their treatment.

Most often, people simply struggle with a “poor match” when looking for a psychotherapist. It’s certainly hard to find someone who feels like the right fit. But when a clinician is impaired or is doing harm, licensing boards are a useful resource. Consumers can ask questions and make complaints to licensing boards. This is also the place to turn to when you want to verify that a clinician is licensed or if you want to see whether there are any disciplinary actions against a practicing professional. If you are seeking care anywhere, it is wise to choose a licensed professional partly because this means there is a governing body to turn to if something goes wrong.

In my office forms, I let my clients know that my presence on sites like Yelp is not a request for a testimonial, but I do remind them that they have the right to tell anyone about my services and how they feel about them whenever and wherever they wish. This right belongs to them.

For more on this topic, check out John Grohol’s Yelp and Therapist Reviews in which he makes some great points about the lack of reliability of the current rating sites and the problem of there being too many sites out there at this time for consumers to find meaningful data.

Last week, Psychology Today, the popular website that many psychotherapists use to advertise their practices, sent out an email to those with listings on the site to inform us that we had been opted-in to a new “security feature.”

From the email:

Psychology Today has recently introduced call tracking and call security
for your profile. People who find you on Psychology Today see a unique
local phone number for you that, when they call it, automatically
connects to your private number.

The email went on to explain that clinicians benefit from this change because it offers us “a simple way to tell who found your profile on the Therapy Directory.” Really? You want to know another really simple way to tell how your clients found you? Try directly asking all new clients how they found your practice. I don’t need the website itself to document patient first contacts in order for me to have this information.

There are a number of problems with this system. First, Psychology Today is used by many people to locate a therapist in their area. But now, clients will not find your actual office number listed. They will see an automatically generated number that Psychology Today has put in place of your office number (as if you would not want clients to know your actual office number!). Then, the site records and documents calls made to our practices without patients being made aware that they are using a third party to connect with us. The call then gets forwarded to our practice phone number and an email summary is sent to us. But the call information also winds up being documented by Psychology Today, including caller ID information and the length of the call. This information is also stored on the Psychology Today site when you log into your account.

This is a serious potential breach of privacy and I object to this service being something I was automatically signed up for, without my consent. On a recent listserv discussion, many therapists had not even received a notification that this change had been made.

In order to opt-out of the virtual phone number, you must log into your Psychology Today account account and click the option in ‘Contact History’. I did this and I recommend others do so if you care about who else retains records of who calls your office or if you want clients to be able to save your actual phone number from the site.

For what it’s worth, Psychology Today also records the information of those who choose to email you from their site. I much prefer that if clients want to make direct contact with me, they use my secure form or phone my office directly without an advertiser acting as the middle man and collecting data on those who wish to use my services.

Update: 8/5/10

For those who want to know more about what it looks like when Psychology Today sends these emails, I phoned my own virtual number. As a caller, it sounded just as if I was calling my regular office line. No information or announcement let me know that my call was being routed through a service. After the call, I received the following email:

Hi Keely Kolmes,

At 09:21 AM PDT you received a phone call. This caller found you on PsychologyToday.com.

Call to (415) 501-9098
Call from Caller ID Blocked
Date: August 5, 2010
Call Duration: 00:00:06

To view a record of this call, please log into your profile and click on the Contact History tab.

FAQs:-

WHY AM I GETTING THIS CALL CONFIRMATION?

Psychology Today has recently introduced call tracking and call security
for your profile. People who find you on Psychology Today see a unique
local phone number for you that, when they call it, automatically
connects to your private number.

WHY DO I BENEFIT?

1: It’s a simple way to tell who found your profile on the Therapy
Directory.

2: You get a record of the people who have called you (Check ‘Contact
History’ when you log in).

3: Spam phone calls from telemarketers are filtered out – about 99% such
calls can be screened.

To opt out of receiving these call confirmation emails, log into your
account and click the option in ‘Contact History’.

—
The folks at PsychologyToday.com
—

*Don’t reply to this email*

© 2010 Keely Kolmes, Psy.D.

To cite this page: Kolmes, K. (2010) Additional comments on documentation for clinicians. Retrieved month/year from http://drkkolmes.com/2010/08/05/psychology-today-introduces-new-call-tracking-raises-privacy-concerns/

I’m very pleased to announce that the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom has published an article I co-wrote with Geri Weitzman, Ph.D. on choosing a kink-aware therapist. You can find both the long article (16 pages) and a short FAQ on the Kink-Aware Professionals page. Here is a direct link to download the printable pdf of the 16 page white paper.

The NCSF is committed to creating a political, legal and social environment in the US that advances equal rights for consenting adults who engage in alternative sexual and relationship expressions. The NCSF aims to advance the rights of, and advocate for consenting adults in the BDSM-Leather-Fetish, Swing, and Polyamory Communities. They do this through direct services, education, advocacy, and outreach, in conjunction with their partners, to directly benefit these communities.

Read a snippet from NCSF’s press release below.

NCSF Publishes Important Information for Your Mental Health

NCSF and the NCSF Foundation are proud to announce two new and valuable publications: A Guide to Choosing a Kink-Aware Therapist, and the Therapists Guide to Polyamory.

A Guide to Choosing a Kink-Aware Therapist , created by Keely Kolmes Psy.D. and Geri Weitzman Ph.D., will help people who engage in BDSM find a therapist who can accept them without judgment or prejudice. Some therapists cause more harm than good when they slap a label of mental illness on a client simply because they enjoy kinky sex.

“Over the years, I have received many calls from folks around the globe who wanted access to therapy that was respectful of their kink identity, but didn’t know where to turn to find it,” says co-author Geri Weitzman, PhD. “We are excited to share this resource on finding kink-aware therapists with our community, in the belief that a warmly accepting therapeutic environment should be available to all.”

“Therapy needs to be a place where you can feel safe to bring your whole self. I hope that our article is a helpful tool for kink-identified clients and the therapists who want to learn more about working competently with them,” agrees co-author Keely Kolmes, Psy.D.

NCSF has also published second paper for therapists: A Therapist’s Guide to Polyamory. This resource can also be found on their site.

I have created a new page on my site which is a compilation of my blog posts geared towards consumers of psychotherapy. For Clients is a good place to start if you’re seeking more information about theoretical orientations, dual relationships, how therapy differs from advice-giving, and other information for therapy clients. I will keep that page updated for people who prefer to read just that information.

I have uploaded my Social Media Policy and have made some minor updates to my current Office Procedures and Agreement for Psychotherapy Services.

If you are a current client, I will update you on the changes and have you sign a new Acknowledgment of Notifications form to indicate that you are aware of these changes when we next meet.

Wake up and smell the smoke

Last Wednesday, I logged into Gmail to discover that I had a new little Buzz icon. When I clicked on it, I discovered what everyone was tweeting about: I was auto-following a number of people. Some I knew and some I didn’t really know at all. We just happened to be active participants on shared email lists, but we’d never met.  I’d heard the murmurs about Google Buzz, so I knew something was brewing. But what arrived wasn’t what I expected. I certainly wasn’t prepared for the invasive experience of having Google decide for me who I should be following based upon the frequency of our email exchanges. And this was just on my personal email account.

7. Of course, if you use PayPal or have a presence on other sites like Psychology Today on which clients may contact you, switch the email address to your new secure email.

Other resources

For some more Gmail privacy tips, lifehacker has a good post Top 10 Google Settings You Should Know About. Here is another informative post 3 Things You Should Know Before Using (Or Continuing to Use) Google Buzz.

Update: November 2, 2010

Today, Google has notified users of a class action settlement in the lawsuit regarding Google Buzz. An excerpt from their email:

The settlement acknowledges that we quickly changed the service to address users’ concerns. In addition, Google has committed $8.5 million to an independent fund, most of which will support organizations promoting privacy education and policy on the web. We will also do more to educate people about privacy controls specific to Buzz. The more people know about privacy online, the better their online experience will be.

Just to be clear, this is not a settlement in which people who use Gmail can file to receive compensation. Everyone in the U.S. who uses Gmail is included in the settlement, unless you personally decide to opt out before December 6, 2010. The Court will consider final approval of the agreement on January 31, 2011. This email is a summary of the settlement, and more detailed information and instructions approved by the court, including instructions about how to opt out, object, or comment, are available at http://www.BuzzClassAction.com

© 2010 Keely Kolmes, Psy.D.

To cite this page: Kolmes, K. (2010) Email tips for clinicians. Retrieved month/day/year from http://drkkolmes.com/2010/02/18/google-buzz-alarms-therapists/.