Attitudes to counselling via the Internet: A comparison between in-person counselling clients and Internet support group users

Abstract

E-therapy has emerged as an apparently popular alternative to face-to-face (f2f) therapy, with some evidence of effectiveness and of the ability of therapist and client to develop a good therapeutic relationship. As yet, however, little is known about those choosing this form of therapy. The present study investigated self disclosure style and attitudes towards e-therapy in three groups: current e-therapy clients, current users of Internet mental health support groups, and current f2f counselling clients. Participants completed a measure of self disclosure (the SD-40) and answered questions asking about the influence of factors thought to be potentially important in influencing a decision to undertake e-therapy, adapted by the authors. Two versions were used, pencil and paper and web-based. Unfortunately, too few e-therapy clients were recruited for the data to be analysed. There was no significant difference in self disclosure style between Internet support group users and f2f therapy users, though the latter had a higher tendency to self disclose. Attitudes were generally not extreme, but Internet support group users were significantly more positive about the influence of using computers to communicate with a therapist. In summary, the study found that Internet support group users had broadly positive views of the advantages of e-therapy, particularly if they had had some personal experience of therapy. Experience of both using the Internet and therapy appear to be important in determining attitudes towards e-therapy. Self disclosure was also found to be related to some attitudes to e-therapy. The difficulties recruiting e-therapy participants was a surprise given the efforts to do this, and may reflect the fact that e-therapy is not widely used. This raises the question of why those who appear to have positive attitudes to e-therapy are not, in fact, engaging in it.

Keywords:

• Online
• E-therapy
• attitudes
• counselling