Videoconferencing Psychotherapy During the Pandemic: Exceptional Times With Enduring Effects?

Abstract

With the advent of COVID-19, a sudden, unexpected, and forced shift has been produced in the field of psychotherapy. Worldwide, many therapists closed their offices and started to deliver psychotherapy online through a screen. Although different media started to be incorporated, videoconferencing is undoubtedly the most common way in which therapists are doing therapy these days. This is catalyzing a rapid change in the practice of psychotherapy with probable lasting effects and deserves to be carefully reflected upon. Therefore, in this paper our aim is to outline the main challenges for a medium that may have arrived to stay. In that sense, we review the literature to describe the state-of-the-art regarding the main aspects of videoconferencing psychotherapy as well as to suggest possible avenues for future research and practice.

E-Mental-Health aftercare for children and adolescents after partial or full inpatient psychiatric hospitalization: study protocol of the randomized controlled DigiPuR trial

“…Barriers for using digital media can be expected to decrease further, willingness to communicate without being tied to a specific location will increase, and technical skills will improve. E-Mental-Health is expected to advance mental health care by being accessible, available, attractive, and cost-effective [85] and should go along with collaborative research from science and practice in naturalistic settings [86]. In case of efficacy and successful implementation of DigiPuR in clinical daily processes, an integration of DigiPuR into regular care is possible and planned.…”

„In Videobehandlungen trotz Distanz Nähe schaffen“

“…Zu den hier am häufigsten beschriebenen Schwierigkeiten gehörten das Fehlen von Sinneseindrücken, Mimik, Gestik, Blickkontakt, nonverbaler Kommunikation, mitfühlendem Austausch, und ein vorhandenes Distanzgefühl. Diese Schwierigkeiten, die paralinguistische, körperliche und prosodische Aspekte der Kommunikation betreffen, wurden auch von anderen Autoren beschrieben (Fernández-Álvarez und Fernández-Álvarez 2021 ; DPtV 2020 ). In ihrem Bericht zur Arbeit mit Emotionen in videobasierter VB führten Thompson-de Benoit und Kramer ( 2020 ) aus, dass diese Arbeit aus der Ferne zwar prinzipiell machbar sei, jedoch spezifische Herausforderungen beim Vertiefen von Emotionen und beim Umgang mit dysregulierten emotionalen Erfahrungen entstehen, durch das Fehlen von direktem Blickkontakt, die erschwerte Nutzung des Tonfalls oder die Körperhaltung sowie schwierigere Einschwingungs- und Abstimmungsprozesse.…”

Psychotherapists Working in Private Practice During a Pandemic: A Literature Review

“…While telehealth can include various media platforms and phone systems, videoconferencing (e.g., Zoom, Doxy.me) was the most widely utilized medium (Fernández-Álvarez & Fernández-Álvarez, 2021;Smoktunowicz et al, 2020). Changes in insurance coverage of telehealth opened the door to service continuity but presented challenges to therapists who were less comfortable with the technology associated with telehealth.…”

“…Psychotherapists also worried about telehealth in relation to HIPAA, security and confidentiality, technical logistics and failures, regulatory and legal changes, and managing insurance and reimbursement (Fernández-Álvarez & Fernández-Álvarez, 2021). As Markowitz et al (2020) explained, telehealth presented some major technical hurdles like challenges connecting, frozen screens, delayed audio, dropped calls, and more, all adding to therapist attitudes about telehealth and its efficacy.…”