Online therapy, coaching, counseling or consultation can be a wonderful support for the busy person who often doesn't have time to take several hours out of the day for therapy and the travel to and from offices mid day.
Whether you are feeling sad, anxious, depressed, confused, frustrated or somehow "stuck" in some aspect of your life, it's never too late (or too early) to get some help...
If you don't live within a feasible traveling distance of Ann Arbor and/or it's just "too hard" to reorganize your schedule to find the time for a face-to-face consultation, working with a therapist via telephone and/or online has obvious advantages:
1. If you are connected to the internet, you can get consultation
via telephone and/or video conference service provided by Skype.
2. Even if you live reasonably close by, you can save the time and expense of traveling to and from your consultations which can add generally an hour on to your time if you consider its likely a half hour there and half hour return.
3. Telephone and online work can be done at mutually convenient times even outside of normal business hours.
4. You can choose your own time of day to write out your concerns for discussion (and you can take more time to think about what you want to say).
5. You can work from the comfort and privacy of your own surroundings at home or from your office on a break.
6. You may feel less embarrassed when discussing personal matters.
7. Studies have suggested that there is high satisfaction with consultation by phone or video conferencing and that, in particular, cognitive behavioral therapy is just as effective delivered in this manner.
Generally, there are many reasons that the use of online therapy & consultation are increasing. The growing body of research into online counseling has established the efficacy of online therapy with treatment outcomes at least equal to traditional in-office settings.
Online therapy has additional benefits unrealized by office-based treatments as it allows the patient to attend sessions at a higher rate than traditional sessions. The number of missed appointments is much less than with in-person therapy. There is also some research to suggest that online counseling is more effective because a client is at greater ease and feels less intimidated than they would in traditional settings. This makes clients more likely to be honest and thus allow the counselor to provide better treatment. Online counseling is also filling the unmet need for clients located in areas traditionally under-served by traditional counselors.
Additionally online supportive consultation and coaching are being used more and more by larger insurance companies & systems to provide support for patients who are struggling with eating issues, post surgical adjustments such as following a cardiac event, diabetes, depression and stress reduction and most conditions that require support while navigating a issues where lifestyle changes are needed.
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