By Maanvi Singh
Lauren Kay has never met her therapist in person. The 24-year-old entrepreneur found it difficult to take time off work for appointments.
So she started seeing a psychotherapist online.
“It’s definitely been different,” she says. Kay, who lives in New York, found her counselor through an online therapy service called Pretty Padded Room. When it’s time for an appointment, all she has to do is log in to the website, click a link and start video chatting.
The format works well for her. “It felt like Skyping with a friend,” she says. “And when I was at my parents’ house the other day, I got to show my therapist my cat.”
Now, she says, she prefers these video sessions to traditional therapy. And she’s not alone in that thinking. More and more people — especially millennials — are trying Web therapy.
It felt like Skyping with a friend. And when I was at my parents’ house the other day, I got to show my therapist my cat.
And mental health care providers are increasingly taking their services online. Aside from Pretty Padded Room, there’s The Angry Therapist, Breakthrough, Virtual Therapy Connect and plenty of others.
There’s a real demand for this sort of therapy, says Bea Arthur, a licensed mental health counselor and the founder of Pretty Padded Room, which is based in New York. “Our target market is women in their 20s and 30s,” she says.
People from all over the world can sign up. “We have clients in Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Korea,” Arthur says. “It’s been amazing.”
Behavior issues like defiance and aggression are common, and short-term counseling can help parents and kids do better.
Those seeking help can choose from nine licensed family therapists and clinical social workers. It costs $45 for a 30-minute session, or less if you sign up for a monthly plan. The company doesn’t accept insurance, but Arthur says some clients have gotten their insurance providers to reimburse them for sessions.
Some studies suggest that therapy online can be as effective as it is face to face. “We have a lot of promising data suggesting that technology can be a very good means of providing treatment,” says Lynn Bufka, a clinical psychologist who helps develop health care policy for the American Psychological Association.
“I don’t think we have all the answers yet,” Bufka says. There are cases where therapy online may not work, she notes. Therapists usually don’t treat people with severe issues online, especially if they are contemplating suicide. That’s because in case of a crisis, it’s much harder for online therapists to track down their patients and get them help.
Student Kahlil Quato fights tears as he speaks at a University of Chicago candlelight vigil in 2007. The service was held in remembrance of Amadou Cisse, a graduate student, who was shot to death at point-blank range.
Privacy is another concern. Instead of Skype, many online therapy companies choose to use teleconferencing software with extra security. Arthur at Pretty Padded Room says her company takes measures to protect her clients’ records.
But it can be hard for people to know exactly how secure the website they’re using really is, Bufka says.
And then there’s the issue of licensing. Family therapists, mental health counselors and clinical social workers are licensed to practice by individual state boards. But it’s unclear whether a practitioner who lives in one state can or should treat someone who lives elsewhere.
“We’d like to see a little more mobility and flexibility with that, because certainly for licensed psychologists the standards are pretty similar across state lines,” Bufka says. Perhaps, she adds, therapists could get a special certification that would allow them to practice in multiple states or countries.
When the Internet was on dial-up and stuff, it was really hard to do something like this. But now you can literally see a teardrop.
The APA released a guideline for online therapy last year. It encourages online practitioners to take care protecting clients’ data, and to familiarize themselves with state and international laws. But it doesn’t resolve these issues.
Right now, some therapists try to dodge the licensing issue by calling themselves life coaches, which doesn’t require state licensing. The problem with that, Bufka says, is anyone can call himself or herself a coach. Those seeking therapy online should ask potential therapists about their training, she says.
Related Continuing Education Courses
 |
E-Therapy: Ethics & Best Practices is a 3-hour online continuing education (CE) course that examines the advantages, risks, technical issues, legalities and ethics of providing therapy online. E-therapy can be used to address age-old problems, such as how to reach out to those who might not otherwise avail themselves of psychotherapy services even though they are in acute need. At the same time, it is clear that many providers have embraced the new technologies without a firm grasp on the new and serious vulnerabilities that are introduced when their patients’ personal health information goes online. Included in this course are sections on video therapy, email, text messaging, smart phone use, social media, cloud storage, Skype, and other telecommunications services.This course is focused upon the ethical principles that are called into play with the use of e-therapy. Among them the most obvious concern is for privacy and confidentiality. Yet these are not the only ethical principles that will be challenged by the increasing use of e-therapy. The others include interjurisdictional issues (crossing state lines), informed consent, competence and scope of practice, boundaries and multiple relationships, and record keeping.In addition to outlining potential ethical problems and HIPAA challenges, this course includes recommended resources and sets of specific guidelines and best practices that have been established and published by various professional organizations.
|
 |
Ethics and Social Media is a 2-hour online continuing education (CE) course that examines the use of Social Networking Services (SNS) on both our personal and professional lives. Is it useful or appropriate (or ethical or therapeutic) for a therapist and a client to share the kinds of information that are routinely posted on SNS like Facebook, Twitter, and others? How are psychotherapists to handle “Friending” requests from clients? What are the threats to confidentiality and therapeutic boundaries that are posed by the use of social media sites, texts, or tweets in therapist-client communication?The purpose of this course is to offer psychotherapists the opportunity to examine their practices in regard to the use of social networking services in their professional relationships and communications. Included are ethics topics such as privacy and confidentiality, boundaries and multiple relationships, competence, the phenomenon of friending, informed consent, and record keeping. A final section offers recommendations and resources for the ethical use of social networking and the development of a practice social media policy.
|
Professional Development Resources, Inc. is a Florida nonprofit educational corporation 501(c)(3) that offers 150+ online, video and book-based continuing education courses for healthcare professionals. We are approved by the American Psychological Association (APA); the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC); the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB); the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA); the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA); the Commission on Dietetic Registration (b); the Alabama State Board of Occupational Therapy; the Florida Boards of Social Work, Mental Health Counseling and Marriage and Family Therapy, Psychology & School Psychology, Dietetics & Nutrition, Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, and Occupational Therapy Practice; the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker & MFT Board and Board of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology; the South Carolina Board of Professional Counselors & MFTs; and by the Texas Board of Examiners of Marriage & Family Therapists and State Board of Social Worker Examiners.