Treating from Afar: Mental Health Providers’ Challenges and Concerns During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 has resulted in increasing needs for mental health treatments and yet simultaneously posed great challenges to the delivery of in-person psychological services. The standard clinical practice suddenly shifted to the use of telepsychology. This study aimed to identify how therapists have been responding to the public health crisis and the rapid transition to telepsychology. We distributed a survey to 502 mental health providers to investigate the challenges and concerns of the delivery of clinical work during the pandemic. Our study found that most therapists (75.9%) transitioned to telepsychology without suspension of services. Therapists reported varied concerns regarding telepsychology, clinical practice, and their personal lives. The most common concerns identified were the use of therapeutic techniques in telepsychology, provision of remote services, and the practitioner’s own health. Our findings also indicated that therapists who are students, female, sexual minorities, unpartnered, and working in public settings experienced relatively greater concerns. It may imperative to allocate more resources to those subgroups of therapists to facilitate their clinical work in telepsychology. This study contributed to our understanding of how the pandemic has impacted clinical work and may inform practitioners in coping with the current and any future public crises.

Keywords:

• challenge
• concern
• COVID-19
• crisis
• telepsychology

Acknowledgment

The authors thank Lena Gu and Chen Zhang for their assistance with developing the survey items.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.