Medical Confidentiality: An Illusion
Many individuals seeking help fall victim to a fatal misconception: They believe the conversation behind the closed door of the treatment room remains private. However, the harsh billing constraints of the health system leave no room for data privacy. The moment you sign with a statutory health insurance physician or use your health card, a data striptease begins that is entirely beyond your control. Anyone billing psychotherapy through health insurance leaves a data trail that can destroy careers.
Waiting for Psychotherapy: Social Exposure
Discretion often fails even before psychotherapy begins, through contact with forcibly involved third parties and circumstances. In the waiting room of a physical practice, you are on display. A chance encounter with a neighbor, supervisor, or business partner is enough. Your mere presence is a statement that fuels rumors and compromises your privacy within your social environment.
Administrative Traps: Diagnoses as Branding
Even more severe is the administrative data leakage. For psychotherapy to be paid for by payers (statutory funds, private health insurers, or civil service aid agencies), the psychotherapist must provide data. They are forced to forward sensitive ICD diagnosis codes and therapy reports.
The consequence: Your mental state becomes a matter of record. These "persistent data trails" follow you for life:
- Professional Dead Ends: The path to civil service tenure is blocked by psychotherapy; security clearances fail due to the risk of psychological instability.
- Financial Ostracism: Applications for essential insurance policies (occupational disability, life insurance) are rejected or made unaffordable through risk surcharges. Banks also increasingly evaluate health data as a risk factor.
The End of Privacy: ePA, ELGA, and EPD
The final nail in the coffin for your informational self-determination is state-mandated forced digitization. Regardless of what the system is called in your country, the principle is identical and the danger is real:
- Germany: ePA (Electronic Patient Record)
- Austria: ELGA (Electronic Health Record)
- Switzerland: EPD (Electronic Patient Dossier)
Political will knows no mercy here. These centralized data repositories are honeypots for covetous actors of all kinds. Despite political reassurances, practice shows: Once data is centralized and networked, its dispersion can no longer be controlled. Whether through hacker attacks, technical failures, human error during access, or creeping legislative changes allowing authorities expanded access — your most intimate thoughts, fears, and diagnoses potentially become public property.
In the regular health system, you pay for your psychotherapy not only with your health insurance premiums but with your civic integrity and your future security. There is no longer any sanctuary there. Anyone wanting real data security must leave the system.
Beyond the health systems of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, using this website and engaging in Written Cognitive Psychotherapy (SKPT) with Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC, guarantees extensive data security through "Zero Tracking + Total Privacy":
Data Security Guarantee (Privacy Policy)
To maximize the security of your data, Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC, operates domiciled in the USA and works entirely outside European health systems. There is no billing with health insurance companies, no reporting to authorities, no connection to ePA, ELGA, or EPD. The following principles describe how your data is handled when using this website and when engaging informationally with Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC.
Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC, Maximizes Data Privacy
Psychotherapie.com and Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC, do not collect data from website visitors. No cookies are set, no third-party analytics tools are deployed, no tracking mechanisms are used. You can visit this site without leaving digital traces that are within the control of Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC.
Newsletter for Psychotherapy
Those who subscribe to the newsletter to be informed about new publications on Psychotherapie.com provide only their email address. This is used solely for sending the newsletter and is not shared with third parties. The newsletter is dispatched independently — without the use of external providers. Every newsletter email contains a link for immediate unsubscription.
Comments on Articles and Psychotherapy
Those who take the opportunity to write a comment with remarks, additions, or personal therapy experiences regarding an article on Psychotherapie.com provide an email address. This serves exclusively to allow for follow-up questions on the comment if necessary, or to invite further discussion or projects. The email address is not published and is not shared with third parties.
Anonymity through Email Address and VPN
The data privacy of psychotherapy begins even before registration — with the prospective client.
Written Cognitive Psychotherapy (WCP) by Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC, provides assistance for self-help to enable the self-healing of psychological disorders:
1. Discover WCP
2. Take Suitability Assessment
3. Start Self-Therapy
Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC, recommends setting up a separate email address with a provider that allows encryption for all communication related to your psychotherapy. Choose an address that does not contain your real name; avoid addresses like firstname.lastname@provider.com. Instead, choose a neutral designation that allows no inference of your identity. This is a simple measure with significant protective effect. Even the best encryption is of little use if your email address itself makes you identifiable.
Furthermore, Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC, recommends the use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN). While a VPN does not offer absolute anonymity because you can be tracked online today via many characteristics other than just your IP, a VPN significantly increases your data privacy, ensuring that practically no one other than you and your psychotherapist is aware of the psychotherapy.
Registration for Psychotherapy
Anyone registering for self-therapy following the anonymous suitability assessment for Written Cognitive Psychotherapy can be certain that their data is transmitted directly and encrypted to Psychotherapist Dietmar Luchmann. There are no intermediaries, no secretariats, no data processors.
Psychotherapy
Anyone commencing Written Cognitive Psychotherapy for self-help with Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC, receives a maximally protected digital workspace with the certainty that only two people know of the psychotherapy and the content of the communication — the client and the psychotherapist.
Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC, fundamentally does not share data with third parties. No diagnoses, no reports, no confirmations. Neither to insurance companies nor to authorities nor to any other entities. There is no documentation that could be surrendered.
All communication takes place via secure 256-bit AES end-to-end encryption based on open-source technology, which is free of charge and can be set up independently. This technically excludes third parties – whether providers of commercial messenger services or other intermediaries.
The Limits of Control
Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC, does everything within its power to protect your data. However, honesty demands that the limits of this protection be stated. What lies outside the control of Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC – such as the technical infrastructure of the Internet, the security of your own devices, or the capabilities of state surveillance – cannot be influenced or guaranteed by Psychotherapie.com and your psychotherapist.
The effort by Dr. Dietmar Luchmann, LLC, regarding data privacy is maximal. Control over external reality is minimal. We cannot resolve this tension, only disclose it.
If you wish to maximize security on your end as well, install the Tails operating system on a USB stick in consultation with us. Tails is a Linux-based live operating system that ensures anonymity and security. Tails leaves no traces on the computer used and runs exclusively from RAM, so data is erased upon restart. Nevertheless, Tails allows you to use a portion of the USB stick for the persistent storage of psychotherapeutic communication — naturally, also securely encrypted.
Your Comment
Do you have remarks, suggestions, or additions regarding this article? Do you have personal therapy experiences? We welcome substantial feedback.