Home
About Us
Find an SE Practitioner
FAQs
Latest News
Resources
Training
Blog
Contact Us
Login
Five years ago the Covid pandemic became official, and many counsellors and psychotherapists, supervisors and indeed trainers, were faced with a decision to start working using online platforms. These had been used before, mostly in emergencies or in gaps between in-person meetings (remember Skype?). Over a period of days in March 2020, many therapists started interacting mostly with a rectangular box on a flat screen, as they sat in a hastily anonymised and reasonably private room in their home, and their clients, well, wherever they could find a space with good enough wifi or 4G, and hopefully privacy. Sometimes sitting in their car in a car park, holding their phone in front of them, sometimes in the garden shed…
The result was four-fold:
As for the quality of therapeutic interaction, there is definitely research to be done. Anecdotally, some people reported their work had become more cognitive, the body tended to become background apart from the hard work our auditory and visual processing had to perform to see and hear the other person through a haze of pixelated images, image-voice out of sync, occasional drops in signal. See here.
This was also reported to be depleting and exhausting. See here. See also ‘Mental health practitioners’ perceptions of online working: a literature review’, here.
Finally the impact of being physically alone in a room, interacting with a screen, has for many years interested those who research loneliness as a phenomenon of this so-called ‘connected’ world. Are we edging ever closer to the dystopian world E.M. Foster wrote about in 1909 in his famous sci-fi short story, which I strongly recommend: ‘The Machine Stops’? (available here).
Economically there was a significant advantage for clients, supervisees and trainees who saved on travelling time and expenses. In the case of online training and attendance at professional conferences, this allowed those people to attend who before could not have afforded conference fees plus flights and hotels, not to mention the time away from work and family. And so the attendance at online conferences grew to 4, even 5 figures. The attendance also became international, including people from low-wage economies who suddenly could afford it. Unsurprisingly, there was an explosion of such online events, huge international conferences, usually with the word “trauma” in the headline, and which after a while ended having very similar lists of guest speakers. The ‘trauma rock stars’, as they were mockingly described!
But this was mainly to the economic advantage of trainers and facilitators: an explosion of online workshops, which in the past would have enjoyed 20 to 40 participants in a large room, and now saw hundreds switching on, if not thousands, with very limited experiential work, lots of slides, mics and cameras off for participants, and interaction with the facilitators funneled through a Q and A option. Many such workshops were recorded and so participants were encouraged to sign up even if the timing didn’t work for them, as they could always watch the recording later. And so we were able to go about our professional or domestic activities while the workshop was on, and watch the rest at a later date. If we ever did. Interaction with facilitators and other participants: nil. Trainers and facilitators’ income: huge.
Shopping around for cheaper therapy: It has come to my attention, personally and anecdotally, that potential therapy clients have began to use their purchasing power and shop around for cheaper therapy, for instance people from the US have contacted therapists in Ireland, a low-wage economy in comparison, to access online therapy, in some cases openly naming the cost as a factor. This applies of course to countries with a common language, but the hegemony of the English language means there is a bias towards English-based practice. Some practitioners from higher wage economies have adopted a stance of asking what the normal fee is in the country the person is from, and lowering their fee accordingly. I am not sure how frequent that is, and would love to hear from colleagues. The reverse should surely also apply. How many practitioners from lower-wage economies are in a position to ask a prospective client: “What is the normal fee for therapy where you live?”, and charge accordingly? Again, I would love to hear from colleagues.
To conclude this first part, a question: Are online therapy practitioners in lower-wage economies bound to become the low-wage labour force in a globalised mental health market? I welcome any contributions you wish to make to this subject. Please email me at publicity@tairseach.ie, and specify if you agree to be quoted, or if you would prefer it to be anonymous. Thank you!
