Confidentiality

If you are a student who is receiving services from the Counseling Center, you can count on the Center's staff abiding by professional ethics standards and state and federal laws that protect your confidentiality. Thus, all of the information you share about yourself at the Center-including the fact that you have even come to the Center-will be kept confidential. Without your written permission, no personal or identifying information about you will be released to anyone outside of the Counseling Center, including HWS deans or professors, friends, and family members. Even so, confidentiality may not apply the following situations:

• If your counselor believes that you or someone else is in clear and imminent danger of harm, your counselor is legally obligated to inform proper authorities and others in order to help prevent the harm from occurring; in such cases your counselor may also decide that it is in your best interest to contact your family and HWS officials.

• If you provide information indicating that someone under 18-years-old is being abused, your counselor is legally required to notify proper authorities.

• In rare cases a court may order your counselor to disclose information about you.

• If you are under 17½ -years-old, your parents or legal guardian may have access to your treatment records.

It is possible that at some point in the future you will be required by an outside agency to sign a release allowing the agency to review your treatment records. This may occur, for example, if you apply for health or life insurance, or if you apply for licensure or certification in some professions, or if you apply for employment in agencies that require a security clearance.