Telepsychology in Europe since COVID-19: How to Foster Social Telepresence?

Abstract

All over the world, measures were taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Social distancing not only had a strong influence on mental health, but also on the organization of care systems. It changed existing practices, as we had to rapidly move from face-to-face contact to remote contact with patients. These changes have prompted research into the attitudes of mental healthcare professionals towards telepsychology. Several factors affect these attitudes: at the institutional and organizational level, but also the collective and personal experience of practitioners. This paper is based on an original European survey conducted by the EFPA (European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations) Project Group on eHealth in 2020, which allowed to observe the variability in perceptions of telepsychology between countries and mental healthcare professionals. This study highlights different variables that contributed to the development of attitudes, such as motivations, acquired experience, or training. We found the “feeling of telepresence”—which consists of forgetting to some extent that we are at a distance, in feeling together—and social telepresence in particular as main determinants of the perception and the practice of telepsychology.

When the algorithm ‘matches’ us: The experiences of early‐career psychologists on online platform services for psychotherapy and counselling in Italy

“…From the clinicians' perspective, the representation of an intervention at 'anytime and anywhere' which used as a slogan by some platforms needs to be transformed into an intervention that requires attention to the 'space' where the client is connected and to the 'timing' of the relationship, as two coordinates that remain important in the mental representation of the psychologist. Such coordinates embodied the 'telepresence' (Bouchard et al, 2011;Haddouk et al, 2023) (Benjamin, 2004;Winnicott, 1971). Its operational implications were highlighted by Ogden (1994) through the concept of the 'intersubjective analytic third' that emerges from the unconscious of the analytic couple.…”

“…The rituals that border the sessions and the interventions, such as the welcome and the farewell, appeared to be lost in online interventions (Tomaino et al, 2022). On the relational domain, ‘telepresence’ emerged as a basic competence that embodies the online client–psychologist relationship (Bouchard et al, 2011; Haddouk et al, 2023). This concept describes a specific state of mind of the psychologist, focussing on ‘here and now’ (physical presence), feeling reciprocally active (social presence) and immersed (absorption) in the relationship with the clients (Berthiaume et al, 2018; Tomaino et al, 2022).…”

“…This concept describes a specific state of mind of the psychologist, focussing on ‘here and now’ (physical presence), feeling reciprocally active (social presence) and immersed (absorption) in the relationship with the clients (Berthiaume et al, 2018; Tomaino et al, 2022). Specifically, social presence emerged as higher in senior psychologists, female and self‐employed workers than in professionals working in services (Haddouk et al, 2023).…”

Meta-presentiality, Digital Health, and Collective Health

“…In the field of computer science, the notions of telepresence and virtual presence were pioneered in the early 1980s 24 . In the 1990s, semantic distinctions between natural presence, sensory presence, and telepresence were proposed 25 ; and, in recent decades, the notions of copresence and social telepresence have appeared 26 .…”

“…In the fields of Education and Health, when considering various forms of presence -real-material-concrete, as well as digital-virtual-informational -many studies adopt different conceptions: virtual presence, copresence, telepresence, and even hyperpresence and holistic presence [21][22][23][24][25][26] . In Brazil, for an analysis of the presenceabsence dialectic in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, Akerman and Moysés 2 used the notions of telepresence, social presence, copresence, and meta-presence, referring directly to Baudrillard 32 , Floridi 15 , Tori 3 and Alves 31 .…”