Online Mental Health Therapy Puts You to Sleep

A study in the June 1 issue of the journal SLEEP demonstrates that online cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for chronic insomnia significantly improves insomnia severity, daytime fatigue, and sleep quality. Online treatment also reduces erroneous beliefs about sleep and pre-sleep mental arousal. _SD

81% of study participants received at least mildly improved sleep after the 5 week online program. 35% slept much better. And online psychotherapy is not just for sleep disorders.

For almost 10 years now, online mental health therapies have been providing everything from online sex therapy to online crisis therapy to routine counseling and life coaching. Take a look at some case studies of online therapies and other assessments of online therapeutic efficacy.

You can find online therapists via websites such as Etherapistsonline, Headworks, MyTherapyNet, PsychCentral, and many other sites.

Expect online health and mental health services to expand beyond the current basic level, as broadband internet speeds improve, physiological and virtual reality interfaces get better and more widespread, and as government medicine forces lower cost medical care methods to the forefront.

Government health care cannot afford traditional-style health and mental health care services for everyone. The well-intentioned drive to give mental health treatments equivalent reimbursement status to medical care treatments is seriously flawed. Rationing is guaranteed under such a plan -- and under any government health care. Far better to use advanced technologies such as virtual reality haptics and physiological interfaces, expanded training and licensing of providers, and a "stepped" system of access -- from online to higher levels of personal care -- for all but the most emergent of situations.

With online therapies, a therapist living in Tiburon could counsel inmates in the Bakersfield City Jail. She could live in a desirable therapist-saturated neighborhood, yet still have access to plenty of clients -- and be paid! A surgeon living in Seattle might diagnose a potentially life-threatening condition for a patient living in Birmingham. He could not do the surgery, but a medical center local to the patient could take care of the problem, once diagnosed.

If you allow the client or patient to talk long enough, they will often give the clinician the diagnosis. Online therapies and diagnostic encounters allow the client / patient far more time to interact with a caregiver. As methods are improved, efficacies will improve.