You can have a face-to-face conversation with a friend, but how do you do that if you want to talk to a therapist? No therapist is gonna make an exemption and leave their phone in another room, not to mention, they literally write their notes into the computer system, instead of on paper.
And with lawyers? I just read about how Luigi Mangione’s conversation with his lawyer is being unlawfully recorded. How do you even have a conversation with your lawyer if you are in custody and they could just hide recoding devices all around the jail?
Sure, maybe they can’t use the evidence in court, but they could just leak an out-of-context audio clip to the press to win the “court of public opinion”.
It is legally impossible to have a truly private conversation with a therapist, any therapist should explain this to you. The only relationships where records cannot be subpoenaed are conversations with a lawyer and confessionals with clergy. This is bullshit but it is where the law stands
Any therapist who practices ethically should make this very clear to you prior to engaging in treatment
Any therapist who has their records subpoenaed should question the subpoena and only release records if absolutely and truly necessary.
We have not really had situations where a therapists records are being subpoenaed to justify disappearing an individual and the therapist simply acquiesces in the modern context. If so, I’d love for you to point me to a case where such a thing happens. 95% of subpoenas for therapist records are for custody battles, divorce proceedings, and disability claims. The remainder (which is probably a smaller number) is generally related to criminal cases where a defendants competence is trying to be determined. In these cases the records are often being subpoenaed by the defense to establish a lack of competency.
I will openly concede we appear to be heading towards times that may very well test the moral code of the therapist community in regards to this issue. To further complicate things unlike during WW2 there are now many paths to circumvent a clinicians resistance. If I for example flat out refuse to release a transgender clients records, or alter them, the government will likely go after the vendor of the software I have used to store my records for the past 6 years. I am all but sure they will acquiesce. The overwhelming majority of clinicians are in the same position as me. Many are not independent and don’t even have autonomy over their records; a subpoena may come and they never see it. The agency simply releases them because it is run by executives that do not want to interrupt revenues. It is a scary time
Just get a clergy license? Boom confidentiality.
This is funny but in serious mode many of my clients have pretty bad religious trauma and the protections for lawyers and priests and stuff fall apart if they were used fraudulently so even if I just got it and never said anything to my clients it probably wouldnt actually work
This is a bullshit law. You should be able to speak to therapists and medical staff freely