Reflecting on professional self-disclosure and supportive relationships with foster carers during the COVID-19 pandemic
Intended for healthcare professionals
Evidence and practice    

Reflecting on professional self-disclosure and supportive relationships with foster carers during the COVID-19 pandemic

Philip John Archard Mental health practitioner, Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust, Leicester, England
Isobel Moore Clinical psychologist, Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Derby, England
Michelle O’Reilly Associate professor of communication in mental health, University of Leicester, Leicester, England
Pallab Majumder Consultant psychiatrist, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Nottingham, England
Dan Warrender Lecturer, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland
Tina Adkins Assistant professor, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, US
Emma Tilbury Clinical psychologist, The Purple House Clinic, Leicester, England

Why you should read this article:
  • To enhance your knowledge of professional self-disclosure

  • To understand how mental health nurses can appropriately use professional self-disclosure in their work with foster carers

  • To learn about how approaches to self-disclosure changed during the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic

Professional self-disclosure can be defined as a clinician revealing personal information about themselves to the person they are caring for. This article provides reflections from clinicians working in child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and their navigation of professional self-disclosure during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. The reflections focus on the use of self-disclosure in supportive relationships with foster carers. Drawing on the authors’ practice experiences as clinicians in specialist CAMHS settings, the article considers changes in the way that self-disclosure was approached following the shift to remote care delivery during the pandemic. The authors suggest that remote working involves a potentially increased scope for inappropriate use of self-disclosure and outline the implications for mental health nurses working with foster carers.

Mental Health Practice. doi: 10.7748/mhp.2023.e1623

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software

Correspondence

philip.archard@nhs.net

Conflict of interest

None declared

Archard PJ, Moore I, O’Reilly M et al (2023) Reflecting on professional self-disclosure and supportive relationships with foster carers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mental Health Practice. doi: 10.7748/mhp.2023.e1623

Published online: 10 January 2023

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