Experiences of Psychotherapists With Remote Psychotherapy During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cross-sectional Web-Based Survey Study

The current situation around the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures necessary to fight it are creating challenges for psychotherapists, who usually treat patients face-to-face with personal contact. The pandemic is accelerating the use of remote psychotherapy (ie, psychotherapy provided via telephon...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of medical Internet research 2020-11, Vol.22 (11), p.e20246-e20246
Main Authors:	Humer, Elke, Stippl, Peter, Pieh, Christoph, Pryss, Rüdiger, Probst, Thomas
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Behavior Computer based Coronaviruses COVID-19 COVID-19 - epidemiology COVID-19 - psychology COVID-19 - virology Cross-Sectional Studies Discrepancies Female Humans Internet Male Mental health care Mental health services Middle Aged Original Paper Pandemics Polls & surveys Psychotherapists Psychotherapists - psychology Psychotherapy Psychotherapy - methods Psychotherapy - statistics & numerical data SARS-CoV-2 - isolation & purification Surveys and Questionnaires Systemic therapy Telemedicine - methods Telemedicine - statistics & numerical data Telephone service Therapists
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	The current situation around the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures necessary to fight it are creating challenges for psychotherapists, who usually treat patients face-to-face with personal contact. The pandemic is accelerating the use of remote psychotherapy (ie, psychotherapy provided via telephone or the internet). However, some psychotherapists have expressed reservations regarding remote psychotherapy. As psychotherapists are the individuals who determine the frequency of use of remote psychotherapy, the potential of enabling mental health care during the COVID-19 pandemic in line with the protective measures to fight COVID-19 can be realized only if psychotherapists are willing to use remote psychotherapy. This study aimed to investigate the experiences of psychotherapists with remote psychotherapy in the first weeks of the COVID-19 lockdown in Austria (between March 24 and April 1, 2020). Austrian psychotherapists were invited to take part in a web-based survey. The therapeutic orientations of the psychotherapists (behavioral, humanistic, psychodynamic, or systemic), their rating of the comparability of remote psychotherapy (web- or telephone-based) with face-to-face psychotherapy involving personal contact, and potential discrepancies between their actual experiences and previous expectations with remote psychotherapy were assessed. Data from 1162 psychotherapists practicing before and during the COVID-19 lockdown were analyzed. Psychotherapy conducted via telephone or the internet was reported to not be totally comparable to psychotherapy with personal contact (P
ISSN:	1438-8871 1439-4456 1438-8871