The Extend of Confidentiality in Psychiatry

Confidentiality is instrumental to the therapeutic relationship in psychiatry and hence its ethical significance. Regardless of its clinical necessity, the maintenance of patient confidence has been the subject of much discussion in the light of necessary breaches and potential implications for the extension of the therapeutic obligations of psychiatrists beyond the individual therapeutic relationship. Indeed, as Green and Bloch have argued “confidentiality can never be absolute, and therein lies its ethical intricacy”