Freedom of Information for Hypnotherapists

HypnosisAustralia, May 2006

By Dr Tracie O'Keefe DCH, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Psychotherapist & Counsellor
Editorial Director of HypnosisAustralia Online.

Gone are the days when freedom of information is a dirty phrase within the marketplace. Government bodies, however, in this time of paranoia, are keeping secret files on people and calling it information on terrorism. Doctors are now required to make patients' medical records available to them. Therapists, of all kinds, morally also need to be under this banner and to make their patients records available to them on request. The exception to this is when a patient is psychotic or incompetent and they are deemed non-compos mentis and under the legal protection of the courts.

Associations would be well advised for legal reasons to incorporate these guidelines into their codes of ethics. If they do not give these guidelines to their members they run the risk of putting themselves in a legally difficult situation should a lawsuit against one of their members ever occur. Professional associations that may not have given clear guidelines in line with both state and federal laws on freedom of information may be deemed negligent in a case involving such issues.

The information that associations keep on members is also subject to freedom of information in certain cases. The Australian Medical Association and the Australian Psychological Society both have policies which deem that all members may access all information held on them by those associations on request of the members.

The Psychotherapists and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA), however, appears to keep secret files on members which its President Ron Perry says it will not disclose to members upon request. On PACFA's website it claims that it abides to the Information Privacy Act (2000) in accordance with Victorian Laws and implies it is covered under those laws. The Victoria Privacy Act Commission officer Anthony Zaspel, from the department that deals with freedom of information, told Hypnosis Australia that he telephoned PACFA in 2005 to inform it that it was not covered by those laws and that it should remove misleading information form its website that implied it was covered by such laws. PACFA refused to do this.

Christine Chinchen the then President of Counselling and Psychotherapists Association (CAPA, NSW), a member organisation of PACFA, wrote to PACFA asking that it disclose such files. Unfortunately the PACFA board still refuses to comply with the wishes of its member organisations. Disclosure of all information kept on a professional by organisations, such as PACFA, to that professional on request, should be a basic human right, one which PACFA appears content not to honour.

©HypnosisAustralia, May 2006