Psychiatrists Legal Duties

• Psychiatrists listen to their patients' most intimate details and must maintain confidentiality. Pascal Preti/Photodisc/Getty Images

  Psychiatrists are mental health and medical professionals that treat people with mental disorders through both psychotherapeutic and medical approaches. Psychiatrists have both legal and ethical duties which they must maintain as part of their ongoing practice in the psychiatric profession and as part of the Hippocratic oath they take as medical doctors. On occasion, however, these legal and ethical duties can cause conflicts between what is practical and what is necessary.

Discharge Duties in Managed Care

• Psychiatrists have legal and ethical responsibilities to provide care to their patients regardless of pressure placed on them by administrators. In an article by Robert Simon, M.D., the author issues a warning to psychiatrists to not release patients too early from their treatment. The pressure to do so is often applied by managed care organizations for which the psychiatrists work. These organizations sometimes do this in order to cut costs. The longer a patient is in the care of a mental health care facility, the more it can cost the managed care organization. Simon notes that psychiatrists have an ethical and a legal responsibility to disclose all treatment options to patients or their families (if the patient is not capable of understanding the options).

Psychiatry Websites

• Psychiatrists who maintain websites have to be extremely careful about the types of information they convey on their sites. Patricia R. Recupero, J.D., M.D., notes in a 2006 article published on the Psychiatric Services website maintained by the American Psychological Association that websites that invited contact from website visitors might also invite the establishment of a doctor-patient relationship. Doing so would create legal obligations between the psychiatrist and the client. Also, if the website visitor happens to be from another state, the psychiatrist runs the risk of being accused of practicing without a license.

Forensic Psychiatry Concerns

• The field of forensic psychiatry often presents psychiatrists with a number of legal issues. The American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (AAPL) notes that forensic psychiatrists can be called upon in a variety of settings to disclose certain information about patients that may come up in assessments of competency. The patient-client relationship must be maintained as much as possible within the legal context. Providing information to unauthorized individuals can create legal problems for a psychiatrist. The AAPL also notes that psychiatrists performing evaluations must disclose the fact that they are performing an evaluation for a third party and that the information will be disclosed.