![]() With a text-based app, “you don’t have that leverage to say, ‘I want you to go to a scary place, and I’m going to go there with you,’” Addison explained.Īlthough video therapy is well-studied-nearly 100,000 people participated in one trial for such services-peer-reviewed studies on text therapy are small. Being face-to-face in a conversation with someone can help them open up because you are there with them. Text strips away visual cues, noted Sheila Addison, a California-based therapist who offers video sessions. (See my companion piece “ What Is It Like to Use Online Therapy?”)īecause of the time lag in communication-it’s asynchronous-text-based therapy is different from both traditional in-person therapy and video therapy, which in comparison are rather close to each other. As I discovered when I did a free trial of BetterHelp while researching for Wirecutter’s guide to online therapy, text therapy is more akin to an email exchange. Although you can schedule a “live text” session with therapists on some platforms, this is not the primary use. In this new form of therapy, you can message your therapist anytime in a secure chat window on your computer or phone, and they respond once or twice a day (or so). “There are a lot of assumptions being made.” “Text therapy is really unknown,” said John Torous, who leads the American Psychiatric Association’s working group on apps. If you choose to use one of these services, you should do so with the knowledge that you’re participating in an ongoing experiment in a form of therapy whose benefits may or may not be supported by future science. But the experience isn’t quite that seamless, and it’s backed by a limited amount of peer-reviewed research. Open up your phone at any time and vent to a mental health professional about your issues-that’s the promise of text-based therapy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |