Confidentiality

UC Counseling Center maintains strict standards around privacy and confidentiality.

 In an effort to facilitate the safest environment possible in which students can feel able to be open and honest about their thoughts and feelings, all information about you and your contact at the Counseling Center is private and confidential. We do not share information about clients outside of the Counseling Center without permission to release it. Furthermore, we cannot confirm or share with roommates, friends, parents, faculty and deans without your permission to tell them. No record of your use of Counseling Center will appear on academic records.  Within the Counseling Center, staff members share information in professional consultation and supervision with each other in order to insure the highest quality of care. In appropriate circumstances, such as coordinating services to a student with an eating disorder, therapists may also work collaboratively with medical staff.

Exceptions to Confidentiality

There are some exceptions to confidentiality that occur only under certain, very specific conditions, including:

  • Situations which involve serious, immediate threat to the client’s life or welfare, or the life or welfare of another person
  • Situations involving current neglect or abuse of a child, elderly person, or person with a disability
  • Treatment involving minors (students under the age of 18)
  • Situations involving court orders

There are circumstances when a student and his/her therapist agree that it would be useful for the therapist to speak with a third party to share information. We will do so only after receiving the student’s explicit permission and consent. There are also instances in which a third party consults with a Counseling Center staff member out of concern for a student and conveys information to the Counseling Center. In those instances we do not divulge information specific to the student to the third party, even whether or not the student has had contact with Counseling, but we do try to help with general advice and guidance.

Within the College, there are rare circumstances in which a UC Dean might require basic health information about a student in order to make a decision about the health and well-being of that student, or about the safety and well-being of the Ursinus community. In such situations, after the Dean determines that there is a likely and /or potential risk, basic health information about the student concerned can be solicited from the administrators of the Counseling Center on a need to know basis. In those situations, every reasonable attempt will be made to inform, collaborate, and receive authorization from the student to be an informed participant in that process.

If you have any questions about this policy or your own specific circumstances, please feel free to discuss your concerns with your therapist, or the Counseling Center Director.