Good quality remote treatment is still proving to be expensive and in short supply
Whether with a private therapist on Zoom, through an app that daily reminds us to log our emotions, or in a back-and-forth with a chatbot, teletherapy is often proffered as a catch-all salve for our current mental healthcare crises. Remote treatment is touted as an efficient way to reach more patients in a time of extreme difficulty, an intimate intervention that can scale.
During the on-and-off mandated social distancing that has marked the past 18 months of the pandemic, teletherapy has shed its status as a minor form of care to become, at times, the only thing on offer. The popularity of remote therapeutic sessions has soared in the US and the “users” we once called patients are increasingly comfortable with and, in some cases, even prefer such practices.