“Recommendations for information sharing that supports family involvement and upholds the rights of service users”
The short brief draws on international research to review barriers related to information sharing between medical and/or mental health professionals and family. The brief is specific to cases where the service user has an acute mental health disturbance.
The brief say it is possible to uphold PHIA (Personal Health and Information Act) and the rights of people with mental illness to health privacy while ensuring that family can be informed of a critical patients’ mental health status. To do so, training to interpret PHIA and other privacy regulations in an ethically robust way, particularly in cases where consent to share information with family is not given, should be adopted as a core competency of mental health service providers. The brief outlines the key role families play in supporting the recovery of a loved one experiencing a mental health issue, and calls for the role of families within the mental health system to be supported and strengthened.
Download the full brief here.