Releasing medical records to the mentally ill : what about the carer?

According to the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (NSW Legislation, 2002), medical records should be released in a timely manner on request by a patient. Mentally ill patients are not discriminated against in this regard. There has been some discussion in the literature (Delbanco et al., 2010; Kung et al., 2013) regarding the risks to patient-doctor relations specific to psychiatric settings, but there has been little reference to patient-carer relations. In the process of gathering evidence to support the diagnosis of mental illness, a collaborative history is encouraged.