‘Online Mental Health’ at Psychology, Philosophy and Real Life, Page 9

Trust between client and therapist is central to the success of the therapeutic process, but how can people working online foster the same kind of trust that builds between people working face to face? Online therapists and clients alike may be able to learn from new research on fostering trust in online communications.

A new website that gives young people a chance to have their say about mental health services will be launched on Tuesday 31 May by the UK’s Mental Health Foundation. The charity wants to find out what people aged 16-25 think about current services, and hopes that SpeakUp! will help to improve mental health provision across the UK.

The Mental Health Foundation today launched ‘Blood, Sweat, NO Tears’, an email campaign to spread the message that exercise is good for your mental health. This follows the UK charity’s activities during Mental Health Action Week 2005, which included the launch of a year-long campaign calling for patients with depression to be offered exercise on prescription.

Sudden changes in direction and mental focus caused by handling large volumes of emails can have a greater negative impact on IQ than taking canabis, according to a psychiatrist at London University.

The first part of this article explored the trickiness of quantifying how much online therapy really goes on. It turns out that when it comes to online therapy, figures like years of experience or numbers of clients worked with are — without significant further information — meaningless at best and deeply misleading at worst. This second part offers a suggestion for how online therapists can report their experience more openly, honestly and transparently.