Learn how mental health and other medical professionals can use social media in an ethical and professional manner, maintaining client confidentiality and personal privacy while on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn

1. Ethical Use of Social Media
Presented by Kathy G. Slaughter, LCSW
Soaring Heart Counseling
www.soaringheartcounseling.com

3. "Conversationprism" by Brian Solis and JESS3 - http://www.theconversationprism.com/. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via
Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conversationprism.jpeg#/media/File:Conversationprism.jpeg

4. The Wild West

5. Ethics: Different than Law, Different than Policy

6. Activity Time!
Brainstorm what kind of ethical dilemmas you might encounter online or offline due to
social media, for example:
• You are in recovery and tweeting about your own 12-step meeting. A new client learns
about it through twitter and attends your meeting.
• You follow a personal blog about depression regularly. You realize a new client is the
writer of that blog while reading the blog at home. The client discloses something in her
blog that is clinically relevant.
• You are part of an online community for a minority subculture of which you are a
member. An acquaintance from that community contacts you about therapy services.
• Your specialty is sexual assault. You write a blog post about having compassion for
pedophiles. You also work with childhood sexual assault survivors.
Discuss how you would handle them

7. Professional Standards

8. The “Anonymous” Web

9. General Strategies:
• Publish a social media policy
• Maintain your privacy settings
• Trim your networks
• Be intentional & remember no absolute privacy or anonymity
• Educate your friends & family about privacy needs
• Optional: use separate personal and professional accounts

10. Platform Specific Tactics

11. Thank you!
Kathy G. Slaughter, LCSW
kathy@soaringheartcounseling.com
Twitter: @SoaringIndy
Blog: www.soaringheartcounseling.com