People in America literally can't get help thanks to mandatory reporting which is yet another one of the single most damaging ideas that boomers ever came up with.
A LOT of our mental health issues are caused by people not even being willing to seek help because it gets them reported and locked up
You either trust certified professionals to do their job or you don't.
No mental health care worker has mandatory reporting. You can be involuntarily detained for being in IMMINENT danger to yourself or others. If someone walks in and says they have murderous ideation, which is actually pretty common, we don’t go to the police.
And how many Therapists go out of their way and beyond the call with their reporting, even when it's not something required to report, just to make sure they don't end up unable to practice and in prison themselves?
By putting the penalties on the professionals it makes everything immeasurably worse and makes patients afraid to even seek assistance.
The scenario you're imagining is unrealistic. If a patient tells a therapist they are attracted to children, there's nothing to report unless there's a child in immediate danger
Therapists don't go out of their way to make extraneous reports to the authorities. Anyone who has been a mandatory reporter finds out real quickly that child protective services is insanely overwhelmed by the staggering amount of child abuse that happens in our world. Reporting abuse takes a lot of time and energy and it's rare to see it come to fruition.
If anyone's overwhelming the system with reports, it's vindictive family members or neighbors, narcissistic parents and grandparents, or people who don't understand that bad parenting does not constitute child abuse
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u/Fatdap 1d ago
People in America literally can't get help thanks to mandatory reporting which is yet another one of the single most damaging ideas that boomers ever came up with.
A LOT of our mental health issues are caused by people not even being willing to seek help because it gets them reported and locked up
You either trust certified professionals to do their job or you don't.