In my early 20s, I was seeing a psychologist for depression. Because of issues with my mom, she thought it’d be a good idea to have an appointment with her involved.
So my mom came to an appointment.
And right after they met, it turns out they started meeting up personally to do some kind of craft project together.
The psychologist did inform me and check if it was alright but I had no idea what to say. Trust broken and I just stopped making appointments.
That sounds definitively against psychology's professional ethical standards, and I'm thinking that their licensing agency would have liked to have known about that.
(a) A multiple relationship occurs when a psychologist is in a professional role with a person and (1) at the same time is in another role with the same person, (2) at the same time is in a relationship with a person closely associated with or related to the person with whom the psychologist has the professional relationship, or (3) promises to enter into another relationship in the future with the person or a person closely associated with or related to the person.
A psychologist refrains from entering into a multiple relationship if the multiple relationship could reasonably be expected to impair the psychologist's objectivity, competence, or effectiveness in performing his or her functions as a psychologist, or otherwise risks exploitation or harm to the person with whom the professional relationship exists.
Multiple relationships that would not reasonably be expected to cause impairment or risk exploitation or harm are not unethical.
Sometime months later, for some reason my phone started pocket dialling this psychologist and nobody else.
I didn’t even realize it was happening. But it drove her so nuts she called me about it a few times, and eventually asked me to remove her number from my phone.