Online Therapy

Psychotherapy is taking on a new form that involves online communication between the physician and patient. Emailing, instant messaging, and webcams are used between individuals in order to conduct sessions. New and innovative ways of counseling always interest me because I plan and hope to go to graduate school after I complete my degree at VCSU. I would like to pursue school counseling, preferably in a high school. Being able to communicate with faculty, staff, and students would be very important in certain situations. New research shows that counseling online in has helped people recover from depression. This short video also talks about the link between stress and depression. We could be seeing patients that have developed depression from high levels of stress as well. Online therapy also helps those individuals that have different locations far away from each other. With everyone’s busy schedules as well as their family’s schedules, therapy becomes just one more thing to fit into a person’s timeline. The study revealed some positive results. The study, led by Dr. David Kessler, found that 38 percent of the participants recovered from the depression after four months.

Since patients and therapists would be able to communicate in a huge number of ways, online psychotherapy will probably become pretty popular. Along with the positive aspects come the negative effects too. There are many cues that therapists would miss out on. Facial expressions, voice inflections, and the face-to-face interactions wouldn’t exist in this type of environment. Both the therapist and the patient would miss out on each other’s emotions and feelings that are seen during conversations and sessions.

The next question that needs to be answered is: what will happen in the future with online therapy sessions and our communication in medical fields?

As a possible future counselor, I would be open to the idea of online therapy, especially if new and advanced technologies were able to help make it more like face-to-face sessions. The article asks whether online therapy will work as good as or better than face-to-face interactions. I’m sure it will depend on a person’s individual situation. Certain conditions could probably be treated successfully with this process, but others would need different types of treatment. I think it will be very interesting to see these new innovations appear in the future, and I hope to be able to utilize it in my career as well.

Who Am I?

Who Am I?

While browsing through CNN.com, I found a “top ten” type of list that displayed the most popular stories that were posted on CNN website. The story shown on the link above caught my eye because it discusses the endless social networks out there on the web and how painters are gaining clients that want portraits done from looking at his/her Facebook and Twitter photos. People want to have their portraits done by using digital images or photos. The article explains how people will choose a digital image for an artist to use for their portrait and they will purchase it. Some will want to be painted as a character, such as you would see in a comic book. Others will want to be portrayed as an avatar or other character.

Reading and considering the reasons behind the decisions for these portraits brought up other thoughts about who this is affecting. With all of the images in the media such as magazines, television, and the internet, has our idea of the perfect body changed or have we just found a way to change our “image” via portraits? Are people scared to show their real identities on the internet, or are people obsessed with looking or being someone else?

One example of how people want to change their appearance is seen on a website for the new television show Mad Men. The website allows viewers to create a character that will look like one of the men or women on the show. The options and combinations are immense. The individual can specify many aspects of the character’s appearance such as the nose, hair, eyes, outfit, head shape, body shape, accessories, and lips.

I wonder how these images could disguise our real identities when we interact on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. I also think about the younger adolescents that are using these tools as well. Their ideas of identity could become mixed up and jumbled with all of the exposure they have to the media.

Check out MadMenYourself! It will surprise you!