Page 109 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

78 Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilence

Vignette 2
To address the bad publicity from the newspaper coverage in Vignette 1, Rev.
Jones reached out to a local psychiatric clinic and one psychiatrist there. Dr.
Katz agreed to come every evening for 2 hours to help with any psychiatric
issues that developed among the hurricane survivors. Over time, Dr. Katz
and Rev. Jones developed a good system where different volunteers would
tell Rev. Jones about people who were frequently crying or unable to sleep.
Rev. Jones initially talked to these individuals and encouraged them to speak
to Dr. Katz and many of them did. However, Rev. Jones was especially con-
cerned about one lady staying in the church. The lady was a successful lawyer
before the hurricane, but she lost all of her property and her firm had shut
down. She would often talk about how life was not worth living since she lost
her home and her job. Members of the congregation were worried that she
may actually try to hurt herself as she has taken overdoses in the past. She
would never go to see Dr. Katz, instead saying that the best thing that Rev.
Jones could do was to pray with her. Rev. Jones did this for a week with an
agreement that if she did not feel differently at the end of the week, the lady
would speak to Dr. Katz. On the sixth day, the lawyer took an overdose. Rev.
Jones felt manipulated and betrayed. He informed her that he felt that she
would need to go to a hospital right away. The lawyer informed him that
she would go on her own, but Rev. Jones did not trust her so do so, given her
recent unpredictability. Instead, Rev. Jones decides to call 911. As he hung up
the phone, the lawyer announced that he violated Priest–Penitent Privilege
and that she would sue him for betraying her trust.

Although this is a bad situation that everyone would want to avoid,
Rev. Jones in this vignette should not be intimidated by the claim of
Priest–Penitent Privilege here. There is always an exception made to
clergy privilege when revealing information is necessary to protect their
counselees. (Also, child abuse laws preempt clergy privilege.) Privilege
refers to the right of individuals to prevent certain information revealed
in confidence from being revealed to the legal system. The information
that a member of a congregation shares with a pastor, the information
that a patient shares with a doctor or therapist, and the information
that a client shares with a lawyer may all be privileged under certain
circumstances. However, Rev. Jones was not disclosing information to
the legal system. Therefore, this is not an issue of privilege at all. It is
an issue of confidentiality, a different term that is often confused with
privilege. Confidentiality refers to the legal and ethical obligations to
not share information. Confidentiality is far broader than privilege