Forum: What Ever Happened to Patient Privacy?

ShamrockTears writes: "I just found out that there are 17 states that include mental health records in background checks, my state being one of them. How in the world can this even be legal? They claim that by including mental health records in background checks, they are alerting citizens to potentially dangerous people. I was hospitalized for depression, and was not a threat to anyone. Yet because I was hospitalized, my background check does not come out clean. This has, and will undoubtedly continue, to affect the possibility of future employment for me. Yeah, it's illegal for an employer to discriminate against you for that. But who do you think they're going to hire, someone whose background check doesn't show mental illness, or someone whose does. I can't follow my dreams and go into the military like I wanted to because of this, now I can't even find a job. Whatever happened to the right to privacy?"