The advent of telehealth technology gives psychologists new opportunities to expand their practices in a cost-effective manner, but little is known about telehealth efficacy and costs. This study of 49 neuropsychology clients interviewed using videoconferencing and 49 matched in-person controls yielded no group differences in client ratings of interpersonal factors. Telehealth clients were more likely to want to repeat their experience, but psychologist satisfaction was lower foe telehealth sessions. Telehealth costs were significandy lower than in-person costs. Concerns about ethical issues, billing, and licensure must be addressed to help practitioners capitalize on new telehealth opportunities.How will psychologists use technology in the new millennium to expand and extend clinical practice? The renaissance of telehealth programs in the past decade has brought enormous opportunities for psychologists to meet behavioral health needs of underserved populations, particularly in high-need rural areas (Conrad, 1998). The American Psychological Association (APA) has met practitioners' vigorous interests by developing special telehealth sections in practice journals (e.g., Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 1998) and telehealth forums at recent APA annual meetings, as well as legislative and advocacy efforts.This article focuses on the specific application of telehealth in direct clinical care through the use of videoconferencing. Using two-way simultaneous interactive video teleconferencing, persons at two or more sites interact with each other in real time over television full-motion video monitors. LAURA SCHOPP received her PhD in 1995 from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is a neuropsychologist on the faculty of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine. She conducts research programs in traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury, with particular interest in telehealth among rehabilitation populations. BRICK JOHNSTONE received his PhD in 1988 from the University of Georgia. He is an associate professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is the director of the Missouri Model Brain Injury System and has published widely in neuropsychology and traumatic brain injury. DEB MERRELL received her MS in 1990 from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is a senior counselor with the Missouri Division of Vocational Rehabilitation in the rural setting of Rolla, MO. She specializes in vocational rehabilitation needs of adults with brain injury.

The results suggest the BMMRS assesses distinct positive and negative aspects of religiousness and spirituality that may be best conceptualized in a psychoneuroimmunological context as measuring: (a) Spiritual Experiences (i.e., emotional experience of feeling connected with a higher power/the universe); (b) Religious Practices (i.e., prayer, rituals, service attendance); (c) Congregational Support; and (d) Forgiveness (i.e., a specific coping strategy that can be conceptualized as religious or non-religious in context).

To determine: (1) differences in spirituality, religiosity, personality, and health for different faith traditions; and (2) the relative degree to which demographic, spiritual, religious, and personality variables simultaneously predict health outcomes for different faith traditions. Cross-sectional analysis of 160 individuals from five different faith traditions including Buddhists (40), Catholics (41), Jews (22), Muslims (26), and Protestants (31). Brief multidimensional measure of religiousness/spirituality (BMMRS; Fetzer in Multidimensional measurement of religiousness/spirituality for use in health research, Fetzer Institute, Kalamazoo, 1999); NEO-five factor inventory (NEO-FFI; in Revised NEO personality inventory (NEO PI-R) and the NEO-five factor inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual, Psychological Assessment Resources, Odessa, Costa and McCrae 1992); Medical outcomes scale-short form (SF-36; in SF-36 physical and mental health summary scores: A user's manual, The Health Institute, New England Medical Center, Boston, Ware et al. 1994). (1) ANOVAs indicated that there were no significant group differences in health status, but that there were group differences in spirituality and religiosity. (2) Pearson's correlations for the entire sample indicated that better mental health is significantly related to increased spirituality, increased positive personality traits (i.e., extraversion) and decreased personality traits (i.e., neuroticism and conscientiousness). In addition, spirituality is positively correlated with positive personality traits (i.e., extraversion) and negatively with negative personality traits (i.e., neuroticism). (3) Hierarchical regressions indicated that personality predicted a greater proportion of unique variance in health outcomes than spiritual variables. Different faith traditions have similar health status, but differ in terms of spiritual, religious, and personality factors. For all faith traditions, the presence of positive and absence of negative personality traits are primary predictors of positive health (and primarily mental health). Spiritual variables, other than forgiveness, add little to the prediction of unique variance in physical or mental health after considering personality. Spirituality can be conceptualized as a characterological aspect of personality or a distinct construct, but spiritual interventions should continue to be used in clinical practice and investigated in health research.