Pamela Baker, in Pennsylvania wrote in asking, “What is the best way to keep in touch with clients?”

While it is a common business practice to keep in touch with clients during and after conducting business with them, it is not always considered legal, ethical, or within the common standards of practice for mental health professionals to do so.  Before you even consider the potential benefits to you and your clients, you must first consider the potential damage that your client may incur from your attempt(s) to maintain contact.

Here’s some examples of potential harm:

• Are you fostering your client’s emotional dependence on you?
• Are you unknowingly undermining her independence?
• If you call your client’s home and her jealous and historically violent partner answers the phone, how do you explain who you are and why you are calling?
• Does it get any better if you leave a voice male and the same partner picks up the message?
• What changes if you sent a follow up note following her missed appointment if her partner opens her mail . . . or just notices your return address?
• What if you send a birthday greeting while your client is off on a trip and her neighbor is picking up the mail and notices your return address?

Our relationships with our clients are complicated and our job, above all else, is to not complicate our client’s lives any more than they already are.  Do no harm.

And, I would add “Do no harm to yourself, either.“  With the recent changes in ethical codes of conduct for mental health professionals, I’ve seen far too many therapists want to slip into dual relationships with their clients or their ex-clients that seem, at least to the therapists,  to be “no big deal.”

However, that has not been my experience.  In fact, every friend and family member that I’ve ever had who has ever seen a therapist and then ended up in a personal relationship with their therapist after termination has indicated the same thing.  The power dynamics in the relationship are always lopsided and the ex-client is always the one  lacking the power.

I tell you this because as therapists we often think we are the exceptions to the rules; and, because we care about our clients we often think that we have our clients’  best interests at heart.  Every week I speak with colleagues and supervisees who say something to the effect of  “I would never make a decision that would negatively impact my client” and yet we do . . . far too often.

Does that mean that you should never keep in touch with your clients?  No.  What it does mean is that you need to do so after careful consideration, consultation,  and only after obtaining fully informed consent from your client.  In my next post, I’ll suggest some ways that you may want to stay in touch.