About my therapist telling his colleague about me?

[Tartanstatin]

We have a local private therapy practice where we live in London. For a while DH saw a therapist there, let's call him Dr Jones.

I decided a few weeks ago that I might benefit from some therapy so signed up to see one of the other therapists there - let's call him Dr Smith. I told DH I was going as I am using family money to pay for it and DH agreed to it and said it was a good idea.

During my first session with Dr Smith he asked how I had heard of them and I told him that my DH used to see Dr Jones. My sessions turned quite serious with lots of conversation about DH and how his addiction problems affect me, including details of our sex life and some really private feelings about our marriage that I have harboured and not yet expressed to anyone except Dr smith.

Fast forward to today and DH bumps into Dr Jones in the street (where we live is like a village in London) and has a polite chat. While making conversation, DH says "my DW came to see another therapist at your practice," and Dr Jones apparently says "yes I know, he (my therapist) told me."

AIBU to find this a bit uncomfortable and unprofessional? That my therapist told DH's therapist that he was seeing the wife of the guy that he used to see?

I agree it's unlikely that the content of my sessions or my treatment was discussed, but the fact that my sessions are so much about DH and then I was the topic of conversation for DH and his therapist on the street, unnerves me.

DH and I do not even have the same surname. So it's an unrecognisable administrative connection.

My therapist should have just taken my answer about how I knew about the practice and moved on without going to Dr Jones and saying "hey I've got the wife now!"

And surely if there is any clinical supervision it should not be done with someone who has a conflict of interest. Even if my therapist was saying he couldn't supervise due to conflict of interest Dr Jones shouldn't have confirmed with DH that he knew I was seeing Dr Smith, especially in a rumour type way - as in "yes he told me."

For those who are saying IABU I think i am just trying to figure out why it makes me uncomfortable.

I wonder if they were checking there was no conflict of interest arising.

For example, in cases where the husband is abusive, it may not be apropriate for one firm to be provide therapy to both the husband and the wife unless their is an ethical wall.

I am not sure of the confidentiality rules within a firm. I also work in an industry where confidentiality is very important and a legal obligation, however this is within the firm - so unless an ethical wall is in place or there is an embargo on a certain clients information, many of the employees could access that information.

It might be similar for firms of therapists - and if I was you I'd want to check that your husbands therapist doesn't have access to details of your sessions as I wouldn't be comfortable with that.

Dctr Jones should never have confirmed anything about his knowledge of you or his colleague, if you had been a domestic violence sufferer, then it could have been very dangerous if your dh was fishing for information.

Colleagues sometimes do talk, but only if they think another professional opinion might help, or if in supervision, but always confidentially.

I don't have a problem that therapists talk re clients.

I'm more concerned about releasing that info to the outside world.

On tv, therapist asked .... Have you been treating..... Elton John/ Brad Pitt/ whoever. For confidentiality reasons are the therapist even allowed to admit they are?

On a lower scale, RL, scheming husband is planning on getting divorced and in order to bolster his case to get care of children, tries to present wife as unfit/unbalanced, MH problems, by confirming she is having therapy.
It happens. So similarly, isn't the therapist supposed to deny even knowing the wife, with a : 'I'm unable to respond to that question' ?

Shouldn't that have been what happened here?
Dh met his therapist. Dh's therapist should never have confirmed to Dh, that wife was seeing his colleague.

The breach of confidentiality is with the Dh's therapist, here.

I am really not sure they should have taken you on as a client in the first place, though if your DH isn't a current client then there may be no problem there and I'm being too punctilious.

I agree with GuiltyPleaseures and Oblomov and others here, once they did take you on.

Dctr Jones should never have confirmed anything about his knowledge of you or his colleague, if you had been a domestic violence sufferer, then it could have been very dangerous if your dh was fishing for information.

Yes, on reflection, I agree with this completely.

I work in an industry where confidentiality is important. We're not even allowed to confirm that someone is on the books. The therapist's response to your husband's statement should have been non-committal. I'd never discuss work with a client if I bumped into them, either - I wouldn't chat for long, and it would be about the weather.

YANBU

Like others said, your husband could have been fishing for information and you may not have wanted it confirmed to him that you were in therapy.

It was very unprofessional.

I'm not disagreeing, it's a genuine question, would a therapist whose client is the husband be able to provide supervision for a therapist whose client is the wife? How can they forget what they heard about the other client? I would find that really hard!

Ideally they should be supervised by someone else, but in practice this isn't always possible I believe.

Agreed with Guilty and others.

Assuming that Dr Jones did not discuss the details of your case with your own therapist - which I'm guessing he won't/ shouldn't have done - then how did Dr Jones know that you were not in fact a DV sufferer?

I mean, Dr Jones in that case would only have your DH side of the story.

And yes, a clever abuser who'd put two and two together could easily try 'Oh, my wife's seeing your colleague'. After all, if the DH was wrong, he could simply say 'Oh my mistake, maybe she just considered it' or something.

So yeah, I'd raise it with Dr Smith and ask for Dr Jones to get some training on patient confidentiality.

Phew, all these pseudonyms are confusing

The two therapists talking to each other about their client list not the contents of the sessions although that happens too (in an abstract way) is normal but neither of them should have confirmed to an outside source!

There are lots of reasons that a client would not want the fact they are seeking therapy to be common knowledge and imo it's the job of the therapist to know how to brush off these questions in a casual way while still keeping confidentialty.