The Center for Cognitive Therapy & Assessment (CCTA) currently has a website and social media accounts on the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter. Our practice also publishes blog articles on our website. In addition, some of the CCTA employees may also have their own individual professional accounts on these platforms. If a client chooses to follow or post to CCTA’s or its employees business profiles, they do so knowing that these interactions are public, and CCTA employees cannot protect client privacy in these cases.
OUR SOCIAL MEDIA SITES AND WEBSITE DO NOT CONSTITUTE MEDICAL ADVICE:
CCTA provides that their website, social media accounts, and any references, links, and other knowledge resources provided on these platforms are for informational purposes only. CCTA do not provide any medical or professional advice on their website or social media sites. If you take any action or inaction as a result of any content you consume on our website or social media accounts, this is based solely on your decision, and CCTA and its employees cannot be held liable for any of the consequences of such action or inaction.
Accessing or otherwise using CCTA’s website or social media accounts does not create a therapist-patient relationship between you and CCTA, the Director, its employees, or any individuals appearing on these platforms.
NDEMIFICATION & WARRANTIES:
While we have made every attempt to ensure that the information contained on our website and social media sites is correct, CCTA is not responsible for any errors or omissions, or for the results obtained from the use of this information. All information on our website and social media sites are provided “as is,” with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness or the results obtained from the use of this information, and without warranty of any kind, expressed or implied. In no event will CCTA or its employees or partners be liable to you or anyone else for any decision made or action taken in reliance on the information on our website or social media sites, or for any consequential damages. Information on our website and social media accounts is for general information purposes only and is not intended to provide medical, legal, or any other type of professional advice. Please seek professional assistance should you require it. Furthermore, information contained on our website/social media sites and any pages linked to and from them are subject to change at any time and without warning.
VIEWS EXPRESSED DISCLAIMER:
CCTA’s website and social media sites may include links to other websites for informational and reference purposes only. Our website and social media sites do not endorse, warrant, or guarantee the products, services, or information described or offered at these other websites. Examine the content carefully.
PRIVACY LIMITATIONS:
Our primary concern is your privacy. You are welcome to use your own discretion in choosing whether to follow us.
INTERACTING & APPOINTMENT REQUESTS:
Please do not use messaging on our Social Networking sites to contact us. These sites are not secure and we may not see these messages in a timely fashion. We do not respond to requests for appointments through our Social Networking sites, nor do we respond to specific requests for mental health advice or guidance through these platforms. You can request a therapy appointment through our website at https://centerforcbtva.com/ or call us at 703-618-0900. Keep in mind that wall posting, @replies, or any other means of engaging with us in public online could compromise your confidentiality and that you may be sharing personally revealing information in a public forum. If you are a client at CCTA, posting on our social networking sites could also create the possibility that these exchanges become part of your legal medical record and will need to be documented and archived in your chart. If any current or former client interacts with CCTA and its employees on their business social media profiles (e.g., direct messages or commenting), CCTA employees will use their discretion about their response, and if necessary, will not respond as needed in order to protect client privacy.
SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY
This document outlines our office policies related to use of social media. Please read it to understand how we conduct ourselves on the Internet as mental health professionals, and how you can expect us to respond to various interactions that may occur between us on the Internet. If you have any questions about anything within this document, I encourage you to bring them up when we meet. As new technology develops and the Internet changes, there may be times when we need to update this policy. If we do so, we will notify you in writing of any policy changes and make sure you have a copy of the updated policy.
FRIENDING/CONNECTING:
We do not accept friend or contact requests from current or former clients on any social networking site. We believe that adding clients as friends or contacts on these sites can compromise your confidentiality and our respective privacy. It may also blur the boundaries of our therapeutic relationship. If you have questions about this, please bring them up when we meet and we can talk more about it.
FOLLOWING:
The Center for Cognitive Therapy & Assessment (CCTA) currently has social media accounts on the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter. Our practice also publishes blog articles on our website. Some of the CCTA employees may also have their own individual professional accounts on these platforms. If a client chooses to follow or post to CCTA’s or its employees business profiles, they do so knowing that these interactions are public, and CCTA employees cannot protect client privacy in these cases.
We have no expectation that you as a client will want to follow our blog or social media accounts. However, if you use an easily recognizable name on social media and your CCTA therapist notices that you’ve followed them on the platform, the therapist may briefly discuss it and its potential impact on your working relationship. Our primary concern is your privacy. You are welcome to use your own discretion in choosing whether to follow us. Note that CCTA employees will not follow back their clients. We only follow other health professionals, news sites, and mental health-related profiles on our social media accounts; we do not follow current or former clients on their blogs or social media accounts. Our reasoning is that we believe casual viewing of clients’ online content outside of the therapy hour can create confusion in regard to whether it is being done as part of your treatment or to satisfy our personal curiosity. In addition, viewing online activities without your consent and without our explicit arrangement towards a specific purpose could potentially have a negative influence on our working relationship. If there are things from your online life that you wish to share with your CCTA clinician, please bring them into your sessions where you and your CCTA therapist can view and explore them together during the therapy hour.
INTERACTING:
Please do not use messaging on our Social Networking sites to contact us. These sites are not secure and we may not see these messages in a timely fashion. Do not use wall posting, @replies, or other means of engaging with us in public online if we have an already established client/therapist relationship. Engaging with us this way could compromise your confidentiality. It may also create the possibility that these exchanges become part of your legal medical record and will need to be documented and archived in your chart. If you need to contact us between sessions, the best way to do so is by phone. Direct e-mail is second best for quick administrative issues such as changing appointment times. See the e-mail section below for more information regarding e-mail interactions. If any current or former client interacts with CCTA and its employees on their business social media profiles (e.g., direct messages or commenting), CCTA employees will use their discretion about their response, and if necessary, will not respond as needed in order to protect client privacy.
USE OF SEARCH ENGINES:
It is NOT a regular part of our practice to search for clients on Google, Facebook, or other search engines. Extremely rare exceptions may be made during times of crisis. If we have a reason to suspect that you are in danger and you have not been in touch with us via our usual means (i.e.coming to appointments, phone, or e-mail), there might be an instance in which using a search engine (to find you, find someone close to you, or to check on your recent status updates) becomes necessary as part of ensuring your welfare. These are unusual situations and if we ever resort to such means, we will fully document it and discuss it with you when we next meet.
BUSINESS REVIEW SITES:
You may find our psychology practice or individual employees on sites such as Yelp, Healthgrades, Yahoo Local, Bing, or other places which list businesses. Some of these sites include forums in which users rate their providers and add reviews. Many of these sites comb search engines for business listings and automatically add listings regardless of whether the business has added itself to the site. If you should find our listing on any of these sites (individually, or the practice as a whole), please know that our listing is NOT a request for a testimonial, rating, or endorsement from you as our client.
The American Psychological Association’s Ethics Code states under Principle 5.05 that it is unethical for psychologists to solicit testimonials: “Psychologists do not solicit testimonials from current therapy clients/patients or other persons who because of their particular circumstances are vulnerable to undue influence.” Of course, you have a right to express yourself on any site you wish. But due to confidentiality, we cannot respond to any review on any of these sites whether it is positive or negative. We urge you to take your own privacy seriously as we take our commitment of confidentiality to you. You should also be aware that if you are using these sites to communicate indirectly with us about your feelings about our work, there is a good possibility that we may never see it.
If we are working together, we hope that you will bring your feelings and reactions to our work directly to the therapy process. This can be an important part of therapy, even if you decide that we are not a good fit. None of this is meant to keep you from sharing that you are in therapy with us wherever and with whomever you like. Confidentiality means that we cannot tell people that you are our client and our Ethics Code prohibits us from requesting testimonials. However, you are more than welcome to tell anyone you wish that you receive therapy services from us, or how you feel about the treatment we provide to you, in any forum of your choosing.
If you do choose to write something on a business review site (or on any of our social media accounts), we hope you will keep in mind that you may be sharing personally revealing information in a public forum. We urge you to create a pseudonym that is not linked to your regular e-mail address or friends’ networks for your own privacy and protection.
If you feel we have done something harmful or unethical and you do not feel comfortable discussing it with us, you can always contact the Board of Psychology (if your clinician is a psychologist) or the Board of Counseling (if your clinician is a licensed professional counselor), which oversees licensing, and they will review the services we have provided.
