Online Therapy Is it safe and effective?

According to the advances of new technologies, we can observe that currently the internet is a A valuable instrument for remote psychological treatment sessions either as a complement to the face-to-face session or exclusively.

Although in terms of efficacy it still seems clear that nothing is comparable to traditional face-to-face psychotherapy, there are many patients who can benefit from “distance therapy” through the use of the Internet, and this raises the question: Is the internet a potentially useful tool for conducting psychological therapy??

The number of online psychologists offering therapy through the internet is increasing and at the same time patients are beginning to lose their fear when requesting this service. However, there are still some prejudices about online therapy. One of them is the belief about the ineffectiveness of this type of therapy. Many people believe that face-to-face therapy cannot be compared to online therapy since it lacks the degree of closeness and warmth that face-to-face sessions provide. However, there are several studies, such as a study carried out by Professor Andreas Maercker at the University of Zurich, which grant similar effectiveness for both types of therapy. 

Is online therapy safe?

Another of the doubts of some people who look for an online psychologist is the question of security. When someone goes to face-to-face therapy, at the end of the day, they are knowing first-hand the work environment of that psychologist and that always generates greater confidence and security, but there are online psychology platforms where they only allow online therapy to be offered to registered psychologists and with experience as on Mindpy.com.

In addition, you can consult a multitude of comments from other patients of the online psychologist, both on the professional's own website, and through the Facebook and Google My Business reviews.

The professional intrusion It is a problem that affects a multitude of sectors including psychology. For this reason, it is important to have the security offered by these platforms..

In addition, today you can consult a multitude of comments from other patients both on the professional's own website, as well as through Facebook and Google My Business reviews.

Confidentiality

In the same way that a face-to-face psychologist must abide by an ethical and professional code, sessions with an online psychologist work in the same way and patient data is treated with the utmost confidentiality..

For example in Mindpy.com sessions are done through a videoconferencing system and confidential chat with encrypted code to be ensure the privacy of patients.

Benefits of online therapy

There are multiple benefits to this type of therapy. One of the main advantages of this type of therapy is the possibility of choose from multiple professionals without limiting yourself to a geographically close region. In this way, if you receive references from a psychologist specialized in your problem who is in Barcelona, ​​it will not matter that you live in Seville. In addition, you will avoid travel and all the time that it takes. When you hire an online therapy session, you only need to be in front of the computer 2 minutes before the agreed time.

Online psychological therapy is still in its infancy but there is no doubt that it will eventually consolidate in the short term. New technologies emerge as a possible and viable alternative when evaluating the conditions that today's society has to deal with. health problems in general, and mental health in particular, and also for the education and training of professionals and social actors who must fulfill this task.

We are in a position to affirm that progress is part of our lives and we are all protagonists on this path.