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ARTICLE · 13 MARCH 2020

17 Year Old, Driven To Therapy Without Parents' Consent

Devry Smith Frank LLP
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A 17-year-old High school student was driven to therapy appointments by the school chaplain without parents' permission. Is this even legal?

CanadaFamily and Matrimonial
Devry Smith Frank LLP
Devry Smith Frank LLP
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A 17-year-old High school student was driven to therapy appointments by the school chaplain without parents' permission. Is this even legal?

This question touches on a lot of rights of adolescents under Ontario's Health and Education Laws.

To start, in almost every situation, someone who is 17-years-old has the right to go to therapy without parental consent. The work of both psychologists and psychotherapists is covered by Ontario's Health Care Consent Act, 1996 (because those are both self governing health professions). Under section 4 of the Health Care Consent Act, every person is presumed to be able to understand the information relevant to treatment and the consequences for making a treatment decision. There are no age limits on what "person" means, so everyone is entitled to make their own health care decisions (including therapy decisions.) The only exception to this is where the health care professional has reasonable grounds to believe that the person

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