ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2020
Experiences of Psychotherapists With Remote Psychotherapy During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cross-sectional Web-Based Survey Study.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 100 citations in OpenAlex.
- Telepsychology and digital mental health communication: an exploratory mixed-methods study of tikTok content.Frontiers in digital health · 2026Pooled it
- Acceptability of a novel suicide prevention psychological therapy for people who experience non-affective psychosis.Psychology and psychotherapy · 2023Trial
- Vibrant Screens: Remote therapy and counselling through the lens of digital materiality.Health (London, England : 1997) · 2025Article
- Psychological support for people with hemophilia and HIV who suffer from cancer: A first national survey.Global health & medicine · 2025Article
- Article
- Videoconferencing psychotherapy: determining acceptance, drivers and barriers of use.Frontiers in digital health · 2025Article
- The digital extension of the psychotherapeutic field and the role of the body in online therapy: a grounded theory study with psychotherapists in training.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Level of Evidence of Telehealth Rehabilitation and Behavioral Health Services for Traumatic Brain Injury: A Scoping Review.Journal of clinical psychology in medical settings · 2024Article
- Evaluation of Online Counseling through the Working Experiences of Mental Health Therapists Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Changes in mental health services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in high-income countries: a rapid review.BMC psychiatry · 2024Review
- Patient and provider attitudes toward video and phone telemental health care during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review.Clinical psychology : a publication of the Division of Clinical Psychology of the American Psychological Association · 2024Article
- Exploring subgroups of acceptance prediction for e-mental health among psychotherapists-in-training: a latent class analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Attitudes of Mental Health Professionals towards Telepsychology during the Pandemic: A Pilot Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Enhancing Therapeutic Processes in Videoconferencing Psychotherapy: Interview Study of Psychologists' Technological Perspective.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- Clinical Psychology and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed Methods Survey Among Members of the European Association of Clinical Psychology and Psychological Treatment (EACLIPT).Clinical psychology in Europe · 2023Article
- Remote Psychotherapy during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-Methods Study on the Changes Experienced by Austrian Psychotherapists.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affects the Provision of Psychotherapy: Results from Three Online Surveys on Austrian Psychotherapists.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Breaking Down the Screen: Italian Psychologists' and Psychotherapists' Experiences of the Therapeutic Relationship in Online Interventions during the COVID-19 Pandemic.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Determinants of psychotherapists' attitudes to online psychotherapy.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Mastery of teletherapy is related to better therapeutic relationship and presence in teletherapy: the development of the teletherapy intervention scale.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe current situation around the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures necessary to fight it are creating challenges for psychotherapists, who usually treat patients face-to-face with personal contact. The pandemic is accelerating the use of remote psychotherapy (ie, psychotherapy provided via telephone or the internet). However, some psychotherapists have expressed reservations regarding remote psychotherapy. As psychotherapists are the individuals who determine the frequency of use of remote psychotherapy, the potential of enabling mental health care during the COVID-19 pandemic in line with the protective measures to fight COVID-19 can be realized only if psychotherapists are willing to use remote psychotherapy.
objectiveThis study aimed to investigate the experiences of psychotherapists with remote psychotherapy in the first weeks of the COVID-19 lockdown in Austria (between March 24 and April 1, 2020).
methodsAustrian psychotherapists were invited to take part in a web-based survey. The therapeutic orientations of the psychotherapists (behavioral, humanistic, psychodynamic, or systemic), their rating of the comparability of remote psychotherapy (web- or telephone-based) with face-to-face psychotherapy involving personal contact, and potential discrepancies between their actual experiences and previous expectations with remote psychotherapy were assessed. Data from 1162 psychotherapists practicing before and during the COVID-19 lockdown were analyzed.
resultsPsychotherapy conducted via telephone or the internet was reported to not be totally comparable to psychotherapy with personal contact (P<.001). Psychodynamic (P=.001) and humanistic (P=.005) therapists reported a higher comparability of telephone-based psychotherapy to in-person psychotherapy than behavioral therapists. Experiences with remote therapy (both web- and telephone-based) were more positive than previously expected (P<.001). Psychodynamic therapists reported more positive experiences with telephone-based psychotherapy than expected compared to behavioral (P=.03) and systemic (P=.002) therapists. In general, web-based psychotherapy was rated more positively (regarding comparability to psychotherapy with personal contact and experiences vs expectations) than telephone-based psychotherapy (P<.001); however, psychodynamic therapists reported their previous expectations to be equal to their actual experiences for both telephone- and web-based psychotherapy.
conclusionsPsychotherapists found their experiences with remote psychotherapy (ie, web- or telephone-based psychotherapy) to be better than expected but found that this mode was not totally comparable to face-to-face psychotherapy with personal contact. Especially, behavioral therapists were found to rate telephone-based psychotherapy less favorably than therapists with other theoretical backgrounds.
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