Telehealth Mental Health Counseling

Have you ever considered telehealth mental health counseling for yourself or a loved one? Look no further! I want to discuss with you if telehealth mental health counseling is a viable treatment option.

If you are thinking about trying Talkspace or Betterhelp, this is NOT the article for you. Check out the article I wrote about Talkspace and Betterhelp for more specific recommendations based on their mode of therapy.

I will go over a brief synopsis of the research then I will discuss my own findings as a patient and as a therapist. By the end, you will have an idea whether telehealth mental health counseling is right for you!

This sounds great, right? What better place to have therapy than at home! But does it work? Do you get the same benefits from being connected via video chat? Maybe you feel as though you would prefer to go in.

I will give research’s stance and I will give my own stance in the following section.

Research has not come up with any conclusive evidence (to my knowledge) stating that there is any particular advantage to telehealth mental health counseling. There are a myriad of studies that have proposed questions about this topic.

Google scholar and pubmed are two great free databases where you can look up studies that report on data regarding efficacy of telehealth mental health counseling. Usually I provide direct studies, so bear with me when I say there are a lot on this topic!

So if there is no particular benefit does telehealth mental health counseling actually work? Research does say absolutely! There seems to be no difference in treatment outcomes between online therapy and in person.

Ultimately, I want you to come away from this article understanding that treatment success depends on a lot of things. If you feel more likely to show up to appointments via telehealth mental health counseling, be sure to sign in!

However, this does not necessarily hold true for everyone. Some of us prefer to go in and see our therapist face to face. I know I prefer that, for sure. These things will be important to take into consideration when deciding if online therapy is right for you.

I want to provide you with my experiences using telehealth mental health counseling as a therapist and patient. We will discuss how I have managed my own practice and therapy as well as what my opinions are.

Online Therapy vs Traditional Therapy

So the research essentially says that there are great benefits to telehealth mental health. But how is it in practice? Allow me to share my experiences.

The caveat here is that you will need to be extra aware of your appointments. Knowing that you physically need to be somewhere may help you to remember appointments. I know this is the case for my counseling!

As a young adult, I do like telehealth mental health counseling. The reason is because I can be a lot ‘choosier’ with my therapist. As a therapist I’m picky. So it is helpful that I can choose from my entire state vs simply my local therapist network.

This doesn’t mean my local therapist network isn’t great, because they absolutely are! However, I have worked with the same therapist for years. I would hate to have to switch and start all over with therapy simply because I moved.

So if you are an adult, my advice to you is go for it! If you feel like life is too much to add another physical appointment to right now, have your therapist set you up with a video call a couple times per month. The benefits are absolutely there!

My experience with online teenage counseling services

Okay, we touched on being adults in therapy, but what about teenagers? Are teens able to do online counseling? Because I did not begin therapy until I was an adult I cannot say I have experience being a teen in counseling. So this section will be solely from my ‘therapist’ lens.

Teens can be a bit of a mixed bag in online therapy. I have seen teens have great experiences and not so great experiences. There are likely a lot of things going on here, so I will do my best to explore the most important of them with you.

Firstly, teens may not want to be in therapy but their parents want them in therapy. If I was referred a teen for treatment and this was the case I would almost always recommend in person therapy.

The reason behind this is because we as people can be a lot more charming in person! Since the screen isn’t there as a degree of separation we can more fully engage more oppositional teens in therapy easier. With a screen, they can simply put us down and walk away, which isn’t all that helpful.

In a similar vein, however, teens that are highly motivated for therapy tended to do great online with me. High motivation for therapy in general is good for successful therapy, so it is an extra positive factor of being a teenager in therapy!

So if your teen is motivated for therapy and they want to stay home, get them set up for telehealth mental health counseling! However, if you do not have access to in person therapy for your teen it is still beneficial for them to talk to a therapist via telehealth mental health counseling.

In mental health (most of the time) something is better than nothing. Sometimes we are limited in resources, which is a gap that telehealth mental health counseling is great at filling!

In my experience, child therapy via telehealth mental health counseling either goes incredibly well or progress tends to stall very quickly. One reason may be that the therapist may not be as skilled with online tools with children as they are in person.

Another may be for similar reasons that teen therapy can be a challenge–they don’t want therapy and you’re just a screen they can put down anytime. These make it very challenging for children to participate in teletherapy because child therapy is much more physically engaging and dynamic.

Being limited to a screen makes this very challenging for even the best child therapists to connect with their patients. I like to take these on a case by case basis. Some kids are fantastic at sitting and talking. These kiddos are great for online therapy!

However, many children like to move and be more physically dynamic in therapy. These kiddos, although they may want therapy, tend to struggle with telehealth mental health in my experience.

So the answer really depends on what the parent, child, and therapist all think of together. I usually will not take a child for online therapy, especially if I have not met them in person first. This can make it easier for kids to engage if they have met you in person first.

At the end of the day we need to ask ourselves what are the child’s needs? They may benefit from having somebody video chat them once per week. Maybe their behaviors are a bit much for teletherapy and it would be better to come and see the therapist in person.

Conclusion – Telehealth Mental Health Counseling

So the answer really depends on what the parent, child, and therapist all think of together. I usually will not take a child for online therapy, especially if I have not met them in person first. This can make it easier for kids to engage if they have met you in person first.

At the end of the day we need to ask ourselves what are the child’s needs? They may benefit from having somebody video chat them once per week. Maybe their behaviors are a bit much for teletherapy and it would be better to come and see the therapist in person.

Online therapy can work for anybody, but doesn’t work for everybody. Therapy may be inacessable for in-person or vice versa. My advice is choose the best form of therapy to fit your long-term therapeutic goals.

Be sure to work with your therapist on your long-term therapeutic goals so you can determine the best course of action. After all, we live in a world with many more possibilities than even only a decade ago!

If you are wanting to discuss telehealth mental health counseling, feel free to reach out to me using my contact form!