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Reply to "Use of self, "sharing personal mental health lived experience by mental health practitioners with service users""

Indeed a very interesting topic , however self disclosure to your patients/ service user is not as simple as sharing a story . As a Physician when you are making this choice, one does weigh up the harm and the clinical benefit  of a hypothesis  based on the formulation that he has a clear rational to test out.

Self disclosure in a clinical context is a highly skilled Psychotherapeutic intervention where  the provider has good grips on the psychological make up of the service user,their vulnerabilities as well as his own, this also warrants a  good handle on experiences like transference, counter transference, projection and other mechanisms involved in Pyschodynamic model of Psychotherapy . Dependency within a therapeutic setting both ways , role reversal ( who is the therapist??), sense of causing a burden to the therapist are some of the few common risks that I am very familiar with however close supervision to the provider may help to minimize the harm if it is considered a risk worth taking.  

I think Self disclosure is a clinical judgement ,based on the best interest of the service user taking into consideration the stage of their recovery. This may not  be generalized .

 

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