This article is sponsored by one of the fastest-growing telehealth companies in America, Antidote Health.
If you’re on the fence about incorporating online therapy into your telemedical mental wellness regimen, let us put your doubts to rest. Online therapy services have been around for as long as the late 90s, and patients have expressed overwhelming satisfaction with their preferred online therapy services.
This is part and parcel of an overarching mid-pandemic trend, where more home-based lifestyles led to online therapy use (as well as the use of other telehealth services) to skyrocket exponentially.
In addition, many online therapy patients enjoy additional conveniences like:
- Cost
- Security
- Response time
- Service quality
- Privacy
If you’re still on the fence about considering online therapy, let us put your doubts to rest. Here’s how online therapy works, and why online therapy works.
Can Online Therapy Work?
Most definitely. The right online therapist can help you work through a myriad of mental health struggles, including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We’d recommend reading up on our full guide on the subject to learn more about the different types of online therapy options you have available.
The public consensus overwhelmingly points toward the profound efficacy of online therapy. One literary review covered in Forbes estimated that online CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) led to a 50% improvement in the symptoms of conditions like anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (O.C.D.), panic disorder, and addiction.
In addition to the aforementioned therapeutic benefits, online therapy offers a useful point of mental health care access for people who live in underserved communities with limited, underfunded access to mental health care resources. As CNBC previously reported, more than 112 million Americans live in areas with limited access to traditional, in-person mental health care resources.
Trusted, affordable online therapy providers have done a great deal of important work in closing healthcare accessibility gaps that impede far too many people from accessing the care they need.
What Is Online Therapy Like?
Nominally, online therapy is very reminiscent of traditional in-person therapy, wherein typically, you’ll be hashing out emotional struggles with the guidance and assistance of a counselor, usually for roughly an hour or so. The key difference here is that instead of processing those struggles on a comfy office couch, you’ll be processing them from one of your home’s comfiest pieces of furniture.
Therapy may be administered in the form of traditional individualized therapy or group therapy services, including family therapy, couples counseling, marriage counseling, and support groups for coping with specific issues in life. Even though certain online therapy providers have personalized options to match with therapists, it may still take time to find the ideal online therapist for you.
Don’t let mismatches demoralize you from seeking out the standard of care you deserve. Know that you may be asked to open up about uncomfortable emotions as part of your therapy, but that a good therapist will ask you to do so in service of your therapeutic healing journey.
Online Therapy Vs. In-Person
Generally, speaking, the quality of online and offline talk therapy counseling is often very comparable. A patient may arguably feel a deeper level of holistic emotional intimacy with their counselor through in-person therapy sessions than online therapy, but aside from that potential disadvantage, online counseling may be able to offer you a variety of potential advantages.
Online therapy may be able to facilitate more efficient, expedient modes of treatment, saving a patient time, money, and from unwanted accessibility issues. You can speak with a behavioral health specialist who specializes in treating your specific issues, no matter how near or far away they are from you!
Online Therapy: Covered by Insurance?
Since certain online therapy providers are relatively new, your health insurance policy might not cover online mental healthcare. Refer to your insurance company to determine if your provider would cover online therapy care.
If you're looking for primary healthcare or to see an online doctor about medication treatments for your mental health, consider visiting AntidoteHealth.ai, where you can have all your telehealth bases covered with the all-in-one, family-focused provider. While Antidote Health's physicians do not provide formal psychotherapy (talk therapy), they do provide ongoing support and guidance for your medication treatment & can be incredibly valuable to consult if ever you need medical advice.
