Online Therapy Paper
This paper intends to expound on three online therapy websites to provide the overall content which comprehensively exhaust all practices and the regulations involved in the provision of services to clients. The online therapy sites include eTherapistsOnline.com, Serenityonlinetherapy.com and onlineTherapy.com. The mentioned sites are three distinct therapy websites with different terms of operation, resources and personnel. This section intends to highlight on the sites’ details to determine their actual operation modes, the staff qualification and the overall overview of the sites (eTherapistsOnline, 2011). The sites offer a similar service regarding online counseling. However, differences emanate in the quality and skills entailed in the execution of their tasks, the time of launch and the number of customers involved. The research also intends to highlight on how the security and the regulatory bodies view the online therapy services. Ethical and security issues are also noteworthy and the work also considers elaborating them.
The eTherapistsOnline.com refers to the first online therapy site to be examined. The eTherapistsOnline.com, is a site of a company that has been in existence for many decades. The site has highly experienced staff with a minimum of ten years experiences in counseling. The site recruits its staff on the basis of experience and ability to exhibit proficient clinical skills, respect and confidentiality (eTherapistsOnline, 2011). The site’s size and integrity allow it to attract many people in demand for its services on a daily basis. According to the site, it is capable of interacting with the number of people who could not otherwise not gathered in one place for their services. The site operates in twenty-four-hours of the day. The site also offers a unique service known as Dr. H. Edie Park, MD, and entails handling most complex matters with a higher degree of confidentiality by the moat experienced expert, Dr Park.
The serenity online therapy is a site concerned with online counseling services. The site is a private entity dealing with the recruitment of psychiatric professionals. The online therapy company is owned by Dr Benedict who has over fifteen years of work experience in psychiatric arena and high-profile hospitals. The site consultations are mainly based on email services. The clients consult the experts through email and chat-to-chat services. The mode of interaction depends on the degree of confidentiality and the preference by the client (Benedict, 2011). The site has been in existence for five years and has attracted numerous people from all walks of life. The site strictly works on the basis of its vision to deliver quality services to its clients. The site expresses its concern for recognition of every person’s wisdom and is concerned with the improvement and restoration of each person’s mental progress. The site relies on mental and psychiatric professionals to perform its consultancy activities, and different mental problems are assigned to specialized personnel (Benedict, 2011).
The onlinetherapist.com is a website that entails personal psychiatric consultants and eight programmed session that obtains daily responses with live conversations through chat. The site focuses on the problems that affect people in the societal daily life. According to the psychiatrists, individuals maybe overcome by personal problems to fatal extents that might prompt the individual to behave in a dangerous manner, to both oneself and the community. The site offers to provide appropriate solutions to every problem affecting everyone at every time to prevent repercussions of mental deteriorations to the society.. The site also offers cognitive behavioral therapy to the clients. Through the live chat, the therapists are able to obtain the problem affecting the client. The site contacts its clients through mails, live chats and direct phone calls (Zelvin, 2011).
All professional counselors are licensed by the state counselor licensure board which enforces the application steps which have been launched by the state laws. The board’s website provides the clients with information on the therapist’s credentials where they can obtain the consultant for the right job. The ethical and safety issues emanate in circumstances where there is a boost in technology. The ethical issues arise where the client can accurately provide adequate consent, and how accurately to monitor on whether the person in the chat room is the actual professional or even the client. The types of disclaimers are provided for each site however, there is no strict law that the actual customer has to abide by the conditions (Benedict, 2011).
The stipulations of the therapist services entailed the customer paying for the cervices via credit cards. The therapist then offers a password to the chat room through which the client can log in for conversations. Nevertheless, either the client or the therapist has limited chances of proving to be the actual person or not. The ethical issues emanate where the disclosure of the right information on the correct person is required. When the therapist and the customer interact in chat rooms, the identities may not be required but truth and individuals’ presentation are necessary (eTherapistsOnline, 2011).
The advantages of online therapy include anonymity among the clients. The individuals who perceive themselves of having tarnished image in the society can access the services unnoticed. Those who have limited transportation access can access the services online and clients who do not have local therapists’ finds ease to use online consultants. The key disadvantage of online therapy is that it does not address some ethical issues are not implemented. The online therapy is free and relies on a opinion, which is prone to lack of security. The lack of ethics and proper security exposes online security to greater risks. Mental health is particularly critical in individuals and should be accorded appropriate security (Zelvin, 2011).
References
Benedict, C. (2011). Services. Retrieved July 28, 2011 from Serentiy Therapy :http://www.serenityonlinetherapy.com.
eTherapistsOnline. (2011). eTherapistsOnline. Retrieved July 28, 2011 from Services: http://www.etherapistsonline.com.
Zelvin, E. (2011). Elizabeth Zelvin. Retrieved July 28, 2011 from Services: http://www.onlineTherapy.com
