Customer Reviews

E-Therapy: Case Studies, Guiding Principles, and the Clinical Potential of the Internet

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This book covers more than just e-therapy, but every chapter is full of valuable information. Generally, the term e-therapy refers to a helping relationship between a psychotherapist and patient that takes place entirely on the Internet (they never meet face to face). Two chapters in this book - the ones by Stofle and Ainsworth - cover e-therapy in depth. Stofle discusses practical e-therapy techniques for professionals. Ainsworth outlines the consumer's view, both relating her own touching and engaging personal experience, and giving advice to professionals and consumers on how to do e-therapy safely and responsibly. Contrary to what one reviewer reported below, there is copious information in this chapter to help e-patients learn how to make sure they get adequate care and how not to get ripped off.

Other chapters are more geared toward hospital and clinic-based telepsychiatry, where distance technology is used to supplement, rather than replace, traditional in-person psychiatric care. The chapter on legal issues rehearses the current legal landscape (which most industry insiders agree is obsolete) but does not offer insight about the widespread movement to update telemedicine law.

If you are a therapist interested in doing e-therapy, you may have to add other books to your library, but I would buy this book for Stofle's and Ainsworth's essays alone. They are worth reading.

This book is well written and I highly recommend it. It gives excellent examples of how to intergrate e-therapy into a practice that involves mental health. It DOES discuss the legal ramifications as well as ethical issues in e-therapy. For those afraid that technology will replace the human, please don't read. But for the rest of us, who are looking to make our jobs more efficient this is a great resource.

The problem with an edited book of this nature is that the quality widely varies. Some chapters of this book come highly recommended, while others shouldn't have even been included. It's too bad, too, as some of this information is valuable for both therapists and potential online clients. Some of it is readily available, however, online already.

The editor's own chapters leave a lot to be desired, with a myopic and narcissistic view of the online world and his contributions to it. While using one's own experiences to help illustrate a point can certainly be helpful, I found all too often the editor going overboard in his chapters. He spent a lot of time describing his experiences not so much with e-therapy, but with things only marginally associated with therapy. I found such chapters to be book fillers, as though there wasn't enough to actually write about this topic.

Overall, a disappointing book. Given some of the professionals involved in it, I would've expected a more balanced review of the challenges facing not only professionals, but consumers as well. Instead, I felt like I got a warmed-over, half-baked idea for a book filled with inaccuracies and irrelevant content.

I felt this book was especially relevant in demonstrating how important a tool e-mail is in a realtionship with a therapist. It demonstrated through clinical examples how a mental health professional can keep in touch with his/her patient on a daily basis and in some cases provide complete therapy to those who live too far to have a face-to-face relationship. I highly recommend it.

This book is edited by Robert Hsiung, and authored by more than a dozen researchers in the field of Online Counseling. Hence, I would very much recommend this book to someone interested in the topic.

The book covers the basics very well; explaining what Online Counseling is, as well as what it is not. The book also provides a well-written history on Online Counseling (which is very helpful--and even surprisingly interesting!).

Dr. Hsiung is a remarkable writer, and adds a bit of whimsy to the book with the stories he crafts, and the way he organizes the technical information.

The one weakness with the book is its age. It has not been updated since its publication in 2002. This doesn't sound like a long time (6 years), but in terms of the online counseling field, and the changes that have taken place, it is quite a long time.

Still, I highly recommend this work!

Final Note: Also look at this Clinical Training Guide for Online Counseling and Telephone Counseling. It tells the reader everything he or she needs to know to get started providing Online/Telephone Therapy: The Therapist's Clinical Guide to Online Counseling and Telephone Counseling: The Definitive Training Guide for Clinical Practice

While this book goes to great lengths to describe the advantages of finding and working with an online therapist, it doesn't seem to bother getting into the nitty-gritty of what can go wrong with trying to have a deeply emotional relationship with anyone, especially a therapist who you can't see, when upset and talking in email.

It also doesn't seem to be concerned with consumer rights, such as what to do if your therapist is just someone pretending to be a therapist, and what to do if you want to report someone but they aren't licensed in your state or country. It doesn't explain what a consumer ought to do if the therapist doesn't act responsibly, short of quitting therapy with them. The consumer is left holding the bag when the therpist is a phoney or clearly isn't the brightest bulb in the pack.

This book's enthusiasm is premature. It is obvious that people can and do benfit from getting information online, but developing relationships with therapists exclsuively online and in email is a bad idea if you haven't met them and can't be sure they are who they say they are, or can't be sure they are trained in what they say they know.

Most of these online therapists don't put a limit on the kinds of problems they will address - they will take your money regardless of their training. How many of them have had training in e-therapy? E-therapy doesn't even exist as a graduate course in psychology training schiool - so how well trained can these therapists be?

Real therapist usually have a few areas of specialty - not everything from schizophrenia to relationship breakup, or pediatrics to gerontology. Many of the larger websites discussed in this book no longer exist - they've gone bankrupt because consumers aren't buying these so-called "services".

These authors are not thinking things through from the perspective of what dangers might be involved for consumers. I'd advise readers to stay away from such one-sided books.