Informed Consent in Psychotherapy

OBJECTIVE: The authors sought a rational approach to implementing informed consent within the practice of psychotherapy. METHOD: The history of informed consent in psychotherapy was reviewed to define a common synthesis that maximizes the potential benefits and minimizes the potential hazards. RESULTS: The benefits of informed consent in psychotherapy include fostering a positive treatment outcome through enhancing patient autonomy, responsibility, and self-therapeutic activity; lessening the risks of regressive effects and therapist liability; and helping the practice of psychotherapy extend beyond particular parochialisms by providing checks and balances on therapist judgments. The hazards include the unpredictability of interactional outcomes and the possibilities of replacing positive expectancy with negative suggestion, replacing a therapeutic alliance with a legalistic stance, and misimplying that patients are passive recipients. CONCLUSIONS: Practical implementation of informed consent in psychotherapy must balance such tensions in service of optimal treatment. As a guiding principle, the authors recommend that psychotherapists convey to a prospective patient information that is material to the particular patient's decision. The level of detail needed in informed consent discussions varies directly with the cost and risks of the proposed treatment, the presence of viable alternatives and their relative grounding in scientific data and professional acceptance, and the presence of significant controversy. Unresolved is the question of how to address problematic or controversial psychotherapeutic trends that temporarily enjoy wide professional support.