Telehealth Best Practice: A Call for Standards of Care

Abstract

Teletherapy is an approach to working with clients that mental health providers have used in some form for years. However, the onset of COVID forced the provision of therapy into teletherapy almost exclusively for a period of time. Currently, mental health providers conducting therapy virtually are not required to be trained in telehealth and are operating without consistent uniform standards of practice. This manuscript pulls from the current literature and guidelines across counseling, psychology, psychia-try, family therapy, and social work to provide a Proposed Standards of Practice for Telehealth. Such standards benefit mental health counselor by grounding practice in common aims and benefits out clients by creating a unified framework for providers engaging in telehealth with their clients. This manuscript provides a review of current literature around the provision of teletherapy and proposes a set of standards of care based on existing literature. In addition, gaps in current literature are addressed.