The Digital Divide: Couple and Family Therapy Programs’ Integration of Teletherapy Training and Education

Abstract

The mental health field is increasingly integrating and growing a teletherapy presence, and couple and family therapists are uniquely situated to offer these services based on our history of innovative approaches to therapeutic services. To do so successfully, careful consideration of training and education must occur. To evaluate current teletherapy training and education opportunities of COAMFTE accredited couple, marriage, and family therapy programs, an inductive qualitative content analysis was conducted on the responses of 95 faculty at COAMFTE accredited programs. Findings indicate that more than two thirds of the participants were in favor of teletherapy integration in training programs; however, most programs currently do not offer such opportunities. Barriers that prevent such integration were highlighted as well as existing concerns to training graduate students in teletherapy. Implications for training programs, policies, and regulations are discussed.

Collaborative Care at a Distance: Student Therapists' Experiences of Learning and Delivering Relationally Focused Telemental Health

“…While these results provide specific and important findings regarding the barriers and ways student therapists overcame the barriers associated with providing relationally based telemental health, additional research is needed to verify these results. There is also need for additional research that can identify the systemic educational barriers training programs may be facing when incorporating relationally based telemental health principles and practices in their programs (Pickens et al, 2019). Finally, and more importantly we need more research on the clients' experiences of receiving and benefitting from relationally based telemental health treatment.…”

“…However, Hertlein et al (2015) found that over 85% of the MFTs they sampled reported that they were somewhat interested in learning about web‐based services. Pickens et al (2019) evaluated the degree to which family therapy training programs provide training in telemental health. They found that while more than two thirds of those responding were in favor of integrating telemental health within their programs, most were not addressing it at all within their curriculum.…”

Terapia On-line com Casais e Famílias: Prática e Formação na Pandemia de Covid-19

“…Em atenção a essa demanda emergente, no Brasil, o Conselho Federal de Psicologia (CFP) regulamentou a expansão dos serviços psicológicos prestados por meio das tecnologias da informação e da comunicação (TICs) durante a pandemia (Conselho Federal de Psicologia, 2020a). Não obstante, questões complexas sobre atendimentos remotos têm sido levantadas, sobretudo por terapeutas de casal e família, os quais, até então, vinham realizando seu trabalho quase exclusivamente na modalidade presencial (Lebow, 2020;Pickens, Morris, & Johnson, 2020). Essas questões incluem aspectos técnicos e éticos, com destaque a como engajar os membros da família via videoconferência, evitar distrações no ambiente doméstico, adaptar intervenções que envolvam crianças pequenas e garantir a privacidade dos membros da família que estão em atendimento frente àqueles que não estão (Lebow, 2020;Wade et al, 2020).…”

“…As fragilidades na formação em terapia on-line com casais e famílias se associam também a dúvidas quanto a indicações e contraindicações dessa modalidade, inclusive entre profissionais com experiência em terapia on-line individual (Wrape & McGinn, 2019). Assim, capacitações profissionais e supervisões têm se mostrado relevantes para a qualificação da terapia on-line com casais e famílias (Pickens et al, 2020), podendo ser realizadas por meio das TICs (Borcsa & Pomini, 2018;Pennington, Patton, Ray, & Katafiasz, 2017).…”

“…Anteriormente à pandemia de Covid-19, as TICs vinham sendo utilizadas por terapeutas de casal e família sobretudo para primeiros contatos, comunicações breves, encaminhamentos a demandas emergentes entre sessões, envio de materiais psicoeducativos ou lembretes de horários agendados, usando recursos como telefonemas, e-mails e mensagens de texto (Caldwell et al, 2017;Hertlein et al 2014;Pennington et al, 2017). Atendimentos via videoconferência, por outro lado, vinham sendo relativamente pouco utilizados (Lebow, 2020), apesar do crescente corpo de evidências apoiando-os como um modo eficaz para oferecer serviços terapêuticos (Pickens et al, 2020).…”