My thoughts on facilitating online reviews for psychotherapy

There are positives and negatives with my making the facilitation of online reviews an active part of my practice. I want those who with whom I work to understand the following:

I believe that only a certain portion of the population are comfortable with online reviews - anonymous or otherwise, related or unrelated to personal healthcare. It is potentially very problematic for treatment if any person feels any internal pressure to leave any form of review during any portion or after any period of meetings that are held. I understand that my favoring or disfavoring anyone who chooses to leave or not leave a review and if so what kind of review they leave will ultimately erode my ability to provide effective psychotherapy and potentially their outcomes. It is absolutely critical for clients to, number one, hold whatever opinions or feelings about me that they do at any given time and number two, to communicate or not communicate these feelings or opinions to me as befits their personal needs in psychotherapy.

I facilitate reviews wanting all that meet with me to understand the above about my outlook so that it does not negatively effect outcomes. Despite the risk of problems occurring for someone anyways, I have nonetheless decided to facilitate online reviews for the following reasons:

  • I believe that numerous and detailed reviews do provide more information to healthcare consumers who ordinarily have minimal information with which to choose most of their healthcare providers.

  • The potential to review my practice online exists regardless of whether I simplify the process. Making it easier for more clients increases the likelihood that online reviews represent a broad example of my client’s opinions.

  • Informing and marketing to the public with information about my practice is something I need to do in order to maintain my practice

Please communicate with me before or during any meetings with any further thoughts, questions or concerns on this issue. Thank you.

- Nathaniel Smith, LCSW-R