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» What about Online Therapy?
What is Online Therapy?
The fast-advancing technology of the Internet offers unprecedented opportunities to provide information and services to individuals in ways that were never even dreamed of until quite recently. One of the new services offered by some web sites is online therapy.
Throughout the past 100 years, many ways have been developed to apply psychological principles to helping people, and so one more new means of providing therapeutic intervention is certainly not revolutionary. However, the use of the Internet to attempt to provide quality mental-health services is prompting many important ethical, legal, technological, and fundamental competency concerns and, at this time, remains controversial.
The National Board for Certified Counselors defines the services offered by online therapists as “the practice of professional counseling and information delivery that occurs when client(s) and counselor are in separate or remote locations and utilize electronic means to communicate over the Internet.” Recent studies indicate that most people aren’t really looking for full-fledged therapy on the Internet, rather, they’re looking for fast answers to questions or quick, general solutions to their problems.
Therapy involves supportive techniques that help lead a client to strengthened awareness and to their own solutions. Most mental-health professionals agree that online therapy sites are not providing psychotherapy or psychological counseling in the traditional sense and many use such terms as “consultation,” “individualized information,” “behavioral telehealth,” or simply “advice” to describe their services.
Present-Day Pros and Cons
Even with the advent of video and audio streaming over the Internet, typed text via e-mail continues to be the primary means of online therapy. Among the major concerns and limitations this kind of communication presents when trying to provide quality therapeutic interventions are:
- The loss of visual and auditory cues that are essential to an accurate diagnosis and ongoing assessment of the therapeutic progress
- Threats to client-therapist confidentiality
- Difficulties in ensuring therapist competence
- The inability to provide appropriate crisis management
- An ever-growing list of legal, jurisdictional and ethical concerns
- Drawbacks inherent to text-based communication
- The unreliability of present-day technology
There are situations in which being able to communicate with a therapist online can provide help that might not otherwise be possible. Online therapy sites may be best suited for reaching people who, for any number of reasons, are unable to meet with a therapist in person. Examples of such situations include:
- When an individual lives in a remote area, far from easy access to a therapist
- When an individual is physically disabled and getting to a therapist’s office is difficult or, in some cases, not possible at all
- When an individual who is already in therapy is traveling and wants to maintain continuity in “meeting with” their therapist
Sometimes people who aren’t yet sure how ready they are to explore solutions to their problems with a therapist, or perhaps are reticent about the idea of seeking professional help altogether, find that communicating with an online therapist offers a useful “first step” or introduction to how they might benefit from therapy.
Link: Find a Therapist
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