Online Therapy Paper
Karla Hernandez
BSHS/375
June 03, 2015
Bernice De Vries
Online Therapy Paper
Therapy can be a client's greatest force in gaining control of their issues and over their life in general. Normally it is been seen as a counseling session held in the privacy of a professional's office with an appointment in the book. In recent years therapy has gone high-tech and taken to the internet. There are several reasons for this including; convenience, cost effectiveness and time management. Online therapy has added many opportunities for clients and professionals alike. On the web today there are a countless amounts of online therapy organizations available for anyone and everyone to take advantage of if needed. To gain knowledge the ins and outs of online therapy we will look further into some of these online therapy organizations, what they offer, to whom they serve, the rights of clients, obligations of the professional, ethical and security issues, and last but least the advantages and disadvantages to online therapy.
The Online Therapy organization is focused around helping anyone and almost any issue possible. The website covers all issues that range from weight loss, depression, insomnia, relationships and more (Online-therapy.com, 2011). It offers 8 week step by step online sessions as well as daily feedback from the professional, live support, chat forum to communicate with others, and tests to monitor progress along the way. Anyone can receive this service for two hundred dollars for the 8 weeks.
The Therapy Online organization focuses on helping clients and providing continued education and research opportunities to professionals in the therapy field (Therapyonline.com, 2011). Located on the home page of the website is information about why online therapy should be considered over conventional therapy. This kind of advertising is a good way to entice people to try online therapy, allowing them to see reasons they themselves might have not thought about. Therapy Online uses TherapEmail sessions to correspond with the clients; these are communications that typically last 50 minutes per session. Given the amount of time the client and professional are able to go further in depth about the client’s issues and find solutions. Therapy Online charges clients eighty-five dollars an hour for their services.
ETherapists Online is a website that focuses on providing many different services to all types of clients. They use private real time chat counseling, over the phone counseling, and email sessions to communicate with clients (eTherapistsonline.com, 2010). ETherapists Online offer something that was not noticed on the other websites, therapists as well as psychiatrists were available for counseling sessions. Typically psychiatrists are able to prescribe medications but due to the fact that they are dealing with people online they are not allowed to do so when participating in online therapy. The act of doing so is unethical and not allowed. Also listed on the website was an online store with recommended reading books that could help clients in their area of need.
Each of the three websites that were examined all had notable differences. Each offered services that might have the same goal of helping their clients but had different ways of doing so. They all offered different information to the clients and professionals alike. After all of this many similarities were also noticed. All of these websites posted in bold wording that they only serve people who are over the age of eighteen and most importantly would only serve people who were found to be non-suicidal. They encouraged anyone that may be feeling this way to find help in their area as soon as possible. All three websites also stated that any and all communication with clients was confidential and was kept so by using secure web based encryptions. Even if therapy is used online clients still have the same rights as conventional therapy and should have
