Digital Therapy Is Quick and Convenient. But Can it Replace the Analyst's Couch?

In therapy for seven years, a 25-year-old actress we'll call Celine was comfortable rattling off a week's worth of emotional ups and downs to her counselor in the comforts of a Los Angeles office. (Celine spoke on the condition of anonymity, out of concern that publicizing her treatment could hurt her career.) Then she made plans to move across the country to New York. "I was so attached to my therapist, I didn't want to see any other therapist," she explained. So Celine and her health professional kept their weekly appointments—over Skype. With 2,700 miles between them, Celine and her therapist used digital contact to make emotional progress.

For about two decades, therapists have been offering services through various media aside from in-person—phone calls, video conferences, chat, and audio messaging—and some types of this so-called teletherapy been found to be as effective as traditional face-to-face counseling in certain settings. A May 2014 pilot study by researchers from the Rotman Research Institute, published in the journal Clinical Interventions in Aging, compared telehealth-based and clinic-based group cognitive behavioral therapy for adults suffering from depression and anxiety; it found both methods had comparable results. The study's sample size was small, at only 18 adults. “Our results indicate that the video conferencing format did not compromise outcomes with regard to mood or thematic content of the sessions,” the researchers wrote. An October 2014 report from a group of Swedish researchers, published in the Official Journal of the World Psychiatric Association, compared guided internet-based vs. face-to-face cognitive behavioral therapy and found similar results. It determined that the technology-based treatment “has the promise to be an effective, and potentially cost-effective, alternative and complement to face-to-face therapy.” Given the millennial generation's love of technology, modern therapy services are hoping to build a customer base by dishing out digital, cheap, and effective counseling.