Privacy Policy

Valisen Mental Health (“Valisen”, “we”, “our”, or “us”) is a therapy clinic based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, operating at valisenmentalhealth.ca. Our Registered Psychotherapists and Registered Social Workers provide virtual therapy services directly to clients across Ontario.

Questions about this policy? Contact our Privacy Officer at info@valisenmentalhealth.com or by phone at 613-707-0333.

As a therapy clinic operating in Ontario, we comply with the following legislation:

• Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA) — Ontario legislation governing the collection, use, and disclosure of personal health information.
• Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) — Federal legislation governing personal information in the course of commercial activity.
• Regulated Health Professions Act (RHPA), 1991 — Governs the professional obligations of the Registered Psychotherapists and Registered Social Workers in our network.

We collect the following categories of personal information:

a) Information you provide directly

• Name, email address, and phone number on the quiz results-access form; plus any contact preferences you separately provide when asking for booking help
• Name, email address, phone number, therapy type, preferred therapist, broad weekly availability, optional message, referral source, and the exact consent record when you request a free consultation
• Reason for seeking therapy and general mental health concerns
• Answers you choose to submit through our educational self-reflection quiz, together with the result category and therapist recommendation generated from those answers. Your raw safety-check answer is never sent to or stored by Valisen or our analytics providers. To preserve the appropriate safety message if you restore a result during the same browser session, only a derived safetyFlagged true/false value may be retained temporarily in sessionStorage on your device. When you continue directly from a quiz result to a consultation request, the first name, email address, and phone number you already provided may also be placed briefly in same-tab sessionStorage to prefill that form. The one-time handoff may also contain an opaque private token used by our server to link the consultation to the correct quiz record. The consultation form consumes and removes the handoff, and neither the details nor token are placed in its URL or analytics events.
• Records of privacy acknowledgements and optional scheduling-help requests, including your chosen contact method, proposed consultation dates and times, time zone, optional message, consent wording, and the date and time of the action
• Privacy-limited funnel events, such as the page or quiz question reached, consultation CTA clicks, form step reached, results views, and secondary Jane link clicks. These events do not contain quiz answers, contact details, concern categories, scores, or free-text messages
• Operational consultation follow-up records, such as whether a request is new, being coordinated, booked, closed without conversion, or has progressed to paid therapy. Booking and paid-therapy milestones are confirmed by authorized staff; a click on an external Jane link is not treated as a confirmed booking
• Insurance provider information (if applicable)
• Communication preferences

b) Clinical information

Session notes and treatment records are maintained exclusively by your therapist. Valisen does not hold, access, or store clinical records. Any clinical information you share is used solely to facilitate your care and is not retained beyond that purpose. Quiz answers and generated quiz results are administrative lead records, not clinical records or a diagnosis.

c) Technical information

• IP address, browser type, and pages visited on our website (analytics)
• Cookies (see Section 9)

We use your personal information only for the purposes for which it was collected:

• To facilitate and support your therapy care
• To schedule and facilitate therapy services
• To communicate with you about your care
• To save and display quiz results, generate a therapist recommendation, email the requested results and matched consultation next step to you, generate a private results PDF when you request one, contact you by email, phone, or text about your result, therapist match, consultations, scheduling, and related therapy services, share your contact details and relevant quiz summary with the recommended therapist for those purposes, and send an administrative summary to Valisen's authorized internal inbox
• To issue receipts for insurance claims where applicable
• To comply with our legal and professional obligations
• To improve our platform's services (in aggregate, de-identified form only)

We do not sell your information, use it for unrelated advertising, or use it for purposes outside the consent presented when you submit the form.

Receiving your requested quiz results does not enrol you in promotional or marketing email campaigns.

We obtain your consent before collecting personal information. By submitting our intake or consultation-request form, you consent to the collection and use of your information as described in this policy.

The quiz results-access form requires an unchecked acknowledgement before the quiz submission is saved and results are displayed and emailed to you. That acknowledgement authorizes Valisen and the recommended therapist to contact you by email, phone, or text about your quiz result, therapist match, consultations, scheduling, and related therapy services. It also authorizes Valisen to share your contact details and relevant quiz summary with that therapist for those stated purposes. It does not authorize sale of your information or enrolment in unrelated promotional marketing.

When the results-access form is submitted, an administrative copy of the result summary is delivered to Valisen's authorized internal inbox for secure record handling. The stored administrative record captures the exact acknowledgement and its version. The email identifies the authorization status and version, and flags legacy or inconsistent wording for staff review before contact or sharing.

The optional scheduling-help form is a separate request to review two to four proposed consultation times. Its checkbox confirms that the times are preferences, not a booked appointment. Valisen or the therapist must still confirm a time before an appointment exists.

You may withdraw consent at any time by contacting us at info@valisenmentalhealth.com. Withdrawal of consent may affect our ability to provide services. We will advise you of the implications before acting on your withdrawal.

Implied consent applies in limited circumstances where the purpose of collection is obvious (e.g., providing your phone number when requesting a callback).

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information. We may share it only in the following circumstances:

• Service providers: Trusted third-party vendors (e.g., secure form processing, email delivery, Cloudflare Turnstile bot verification, access-controlled operational storage, and configured conversion measurement) who are contractually bound to protect your information and use it only to provide services to us.
• Insurance providers: With your explicit consent, to facilitate reimbursement claims.
• Recommended therapist: Only after you submit the results-access acknowledgement authorizing Valisen to share your contact details and relevant quiz summary, and only for result, matching, consultation, scheduling, and related therapy-service follow-up. If you submit proposed times through scheduling help, those preferences may also be shared to coordinate a possible appointment.
• Legal requirements: When required by law, court order, or regulatory body.
• Safety: Where there is an immediate risk of serious harm to you or another person, as required under PHIPA and our professional obligations.

Valisen retains administrative intake and quiz lead records (name, contact information, insurance details when applicable, submitted quiz data, matching information, administrative engagement timestamps, proposed scheduling times and time zone, booking-help preferences, and consent records) for a minimum of 7 years for tax and regulatory purposes.

Clinical records — including session notes, treatment plans, and progress records — are held exclusively by your assigned therapist in accordance with their regulatory college's standards (CRPO for Registered Psychotherapists, OCSWSSW for Registered Social Workers), which require retention for a minimum of 10 years from the date of last service, or until a minor client turns 18 plus 10 years, whichever is longer. For questions about your clinical records, contact your therapist directly.

We protect your personal information using appropriate physical, administrative, and technical safeguards, including:

• Encrypted data transmission (TLS/HTTPS) for all web communications
• Secure, access-controlled systems
• Role-based access so only authorized administrative staff can view intake records
• Cloudflare Turnstile verification, server-side validation, honeypots, origin checks, payload limits, and rate limits on quiz results-access requests, quiz scheduling-help requests, consultation submissions, and private checkpoint-admin sign-in
• Confidentiality agreements with all staff and contractors

Our website uses cookies and similar technologies to improve user experience and analyse traffic. We use:

• Essential browser storage: Necessary for functions such as restoring a private quiz result and maintaining a random, per-tab funnel session during the browser session. This can include the private result capability and the derived safetyFlagged true/false value on your device; it does not include your raw safety-check answer.
• Therapist finder: Choices made in the short homepage or directory finder stay in the current page only. They are not placed in the page URL, saved to browser storage, or sent in advertising analytics events.
• First-touch attribution: Standard UTM campaign fields may be retained in session storage to understand the non-clinical source of a visit. UTM terms remain first-party and are not copied into analytics events because a term could contain health-related wording.
• Mental Battery Checkpoints: The four check-in answers and the resulting battery score are calculated in your browser and are not sent to or stored by Valisen. We record only allow-listed journey events, such as starting, completing a step, viewing the result, or choosing a therapist-support option. For the final “what would help” question only, we record one of four fixed next-step categories so we can understand aggregate preference; we do not record the first three answers, the score, or free text. These events use a random identifier kept for the current browser tab and may include the permanent checkpoint and active placement identifiers. They do not include names, contact details, answers, free text, IP addresses, full user agents, device fingerprints, advertising identifiers, or location coordinates. Google marketing tags are disabled on checkpoint pages and remain disabled for that browser tab while its checkpoint session continues into consultation or therapist browsing. If you later choose to submit the separate consultation form, that voluntary request may be associated with the checkpoint session and placement, but not with your Mental Battery answers.
• Analytics cookies: We may use privacy-respecting analytics to understand how visitors use our website. Quiz scores, finder choices, therapist recommendations, concern categories, written responses, safety answers, names, email addresses, and phone numbers are not sent in quiz or therapist-finder analytics events.
• First-party funnel measurement: A random session identifier and sequence number let us update a session summary and an event log in access-controlled operational storage, with an access-controlled Google Sheet retained as a live reporting and export mirror. This shows the last page, quiz question, or consultation step reached and whether a consultation CTA or secondary Jane link was clicked. The event endpoint rejects contact information, quiz answers, scores, safety answers, and written messages.
• Dedicated Google Ads journeys: Visits to an allow-listed Google Ads entry address can start a separate random, per-tab session in an access-controlled event store. A short-lived, purpose-bound signed marker is kept in that tab so ordinary, Meta, and other website visits do not enter this reporting stream. The marker ends after 30 minutes without journey activity, on a new non-Google campaign/direct navigation, or after its absolute expiry. We retain allow-listed page paths, structural section identifiers, active foreground time, scroll milestones, safe click categories, consultation-form progression, and non-clinical UTM campaign identifiers. We do not place form values, names, contact details, free text, quiz answers or results, search terms, crisis-resource calls, DOM content, or arbitrary URLs in those events. Google click identifiers may be held only in the current tab and made available to the Google conversion tag after a durable consultation request; the identifiers are not copied into Valisen's CRM or journey event records. If you voluntarily submit the consultation form, the confirmed request may be linked to that anonymous journey so we can measure the consultation conversion. Unlinked detailed events are retained for no more than 90 days; all detailed journey events and unlinked summaries are removed after no more than 13 months. A linked summary follows the administrative consultation record's retention period. Detailed journey events remain first-party and are not sent to Google. Opening the underlying landing page without a valid entry marker does not enter this event stream.

You may disable cookies in your browser settings, though this may affect functionality.

You have the right to:

• Access your personal information held by us
• Request correction of inaccurate information
• Know what information we hold about you and how it has been used or disclosed
• Complain to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC) if you believe your privacy rights have been violated

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at info@valisenmentalhealth.com. We will respond within 30 days.

The Registered Psychotherapists and Registered Social Workers in our network are subject to mandatory reporting obligations under Ontario law, including:

• Reporting suspected child abuse or neglect to the Children's Aid Society under the Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017
• Disclosing information where there is imminent risk of serious bodily harm to a person
• Reporting sexual abuse by a health professional under RHPA requirements

These disclosures do not require your consent and are required by law.

Virtual therapy sessions are conducted via secure, encrypted video platforms used by your assigned therapist. We use only platforms that comply with Canadian privacy law. Recordings of sessions are not made without your explicit written consent.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated to active clients via email. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision. Continued use of our services after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Privacy Officer
Valisen Mental Health
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Email: info@valisenmentalhealth.com
Phone: 613-707-0333

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC):

2 Bloor Street East, Suite 1400
Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8
Phone: 1-800-387-0073
Website: www.ipc.on.ca