Ethical Implications of Online Psychological Services

Ethical Implications of Online Psychological Services

Introduction

The many ethical issues that arise in the use of new technology in psychological services have been recognised for several years. In the early years of the Internet, articles such as "Ethics and the Internet: Appropriate behavior in electronic communication" (Langford, 1996) and "Ethical and legal issues in e-mail therapy" (Shapiro & Schulman, 1996) were published to alert psychologists to the issues that could be faced. Today, there are many articles available in professional journals, where thoughtful and knowledgeable colleagues have gone through die peer-review process to publish their thoughts regarding the potential ethical issues involved and how to manage them.

One topic that has had considerable attention is online counselling, also known as e-therapy or telepsychology (Rummell & Joyce, 2010). However, many other topics can be found, such as computerized online test scoring services (Fisher & Fried, 2009), e-mail teleconsultations (Bergus, Emerson, Reed, & Attaluri, 2006), searching online for client information (Clinton, Silverman, & Brendel, 2010), online client discussion groups, the use of online psychological assessments, the management of negative reviews published online through provider-rating sites (Luo & Smith, 2011), e-mail communications with clients, electronic health records (Jain & Roberts, 2009), cross-border regulatory considerations (Smith, 2010), online test sales and auction, the need to educate the public about the uneven quality of online health information, online reimbursement and billing, client blogs (Tunick & Mednick, 2009), and online threats to test security (CPA, 2009).

Discussion

While less prevalent, there are also published resources relating to academic ethical dilemmas. Authors have written on the ethical dilemmas of using new technology in teaching, including the challenges related to online education, the provision of online supervision, the need for training in the use of providing psychological services through new technologies, searching online for information on your students (Behnke, 2008), and problems relating to plagiarism from online resources. There are also very specific discussions on aspects of research ethics such as research on online counselling and the numerous questions relating to conducting research studies on or through the Internet.

The Internet has long been seen as having an important impact on the provision of psychology services. This impact was noted in 2000 by then American Psychological Association Chief Executive Officer, Raymond Fowler, in his commentary in a special issue of the APA Monitor on Psychology that was devoted to "Psychology and the Internet." In his column over 10 years ago, Fowler noted "the Internet is already changing how psychologists work and how we communicate with each other in the world" (p. 5). Yet, while the Internet has changed how we practice, psychologists must carefully consider how the similarities and differences between traditional practice and practice with these new technologies will affect their provision of services.

Web-Based Advertising

One area where psychologists have purposely moved onto the Internet has been in advertising their services. Shead and Dobson (2004) and Koocher (2008) argued that psychologists could advertise psychological services more aggressively than had been the case in the ...