The Internet and social media create a number of new ethical and clinical challenges for practitioners who use social media to interact on the Internet or who provide online mental health services.

As the line between public and private continues to blur, the tremendous availability of online personal information threatens to alter what has been an almost sacred relationship between therapist and patient. In this program, Keely Kolmes, PsyD, and Frederic Reamer, PhD, focus on such questions as confidentiality, informed consent, self-disclosure, social media policies, documentation, boundaries, practice competence, and potential malpractice claims when ethical standards are violated.

Format: Asynchronous, distance learning. Non-interactive. Recorded audio with transcript.

This course meets the requirement for the risk management discount for the American Professional Agency.

You can access the audio to these interviews via your computer’s MP3 player and/or read the text of the interviews.

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Page last modified or reviewed by athealth.com on Jun 11, 2025.

Subject Matter Experts:

Keely Kolmes, PsyD, is a licensed psychologist in San Francisco, CA. She is now in private practice following six years as a staff psychologist at Counseling and Psychological Services at Vaden Health Center at Stanford University. She writes, does research, and provides consultation and training on clinical and ethical issues related to social networking and technology. Her private practice Social Media Policy has been frequently cited and is recommended for clinicians by the APA Insurance Trust. Dr. Kolmes Social Media Policy is found at https://drkkolmes.com/for-clinicians/social-media-policy.

Dr. Kolmes contributes to several professional newsletters and blogs. She also serves as a mentor for Division 42's Mentorshoppe. Her professional website is https://drkkolmes.com/ where she keeps her blog, Mindful Musings at https://drkkolmes.com/blog. She can also be found on Twitter as @drkkolmes.

Frederic G. Reamer, PhD, is a professor in the graduate program of the School of Social Work, Rhode Island College, where he has been on the faculty since 1983. Dr. Reamer has conducted extensive research on professional ethics and has been involved in several national research projects sponsored by the Hastings Center, The Carnegie Corporation, and the Haas Foundation. He has lectured extensively nationally and internationally on the subject of professional ethics and professional malpractice and liability. He chaired the national task force that drafted the Code of Ethics adopted by the National Association of Social Workers in 1996. He is the author or editor of many books and articles on ethics, including Social Work Values and Ethics and AIDS and Ethics, and he has authored chapters on professional ethics in the Encyclopedia of Bioethics and the Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics.

In addition, he has been an essayist on National Public Radio's Morning Edition ("This I Believe" series) and a commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. In 2007 Dr. Reamer was appointed producer of the National Public Radio weekly series, This I Believe Rhode Island, sponsored by NPR and radio station WRNI.

Interviewer:

Barbara Alexander, LCSW, BCD, is a graduate of the Smith College School for Social Work and the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Program of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. After working for 13 years in child psychiatric settings and 30 years in private practice, she is now founder and president of On Good Authority, and an expert interviewer.

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