Counseling Today’s October cover story delves into the evolving relationship between counseling, technology and social media, and how many counselors have begun to integrate these things tools into their practices. A Sept. 23 New York Times article expands this topic to include a variety of helping professionals, reporting how some therapists are using video conferencing to reach clients who are far away or on the go:
“Ms. Weinblatt, a 30-year-old high school teacher in Oregon, used to be in treatment the conventional way — with face-to-face office appointments. Now, with her new doctor, she said: ‘I can have a Skype therapy session with my morning coffee or before a night on the town with the girls. I can take a break from shopping for a session. I took my doctor with me through three states this summer!’
And, she added, ‘I even e-mailed him that I was panicked about a first date, and he wrote back and said we could do a 20-minute mini-session.’ Since telepsychiatry was introduced decades ago, video conferencing has been an increasingly accepted way to reach patients in hospitals, prisons, veterans’ health care facilities and rural clinics — all supervised sites.”
DeeAnna Merz Nagel, an American Counseling Association member who cofounded the Online Therapy Institute, was interviewed both for the Counseling Today article and for the piece in The New York Times.
Read the rest of the New York Times article
Heather Rudow is a staff writer for Counseling Today. Email her at hrudow@counseling.org.