{"title":"Treating from Afar: Mental Health Providers' Challenges and Concerns During the COVID-19 Pandemic.","authors":"Tao Lin, Suzannah J Stone, Timothy Anderson","doi":"10.1080/08964289.2021.1908217","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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.</p>","PeriodicalId":55395,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral Medicine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0000,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08964289.2021.1908217","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Behavioral Medicine","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08964289.2021.1908217","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2021/5/5 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
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.
期刊介绍:
Behavioral Medicine is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal, which fosters and promotes the exchange of knowledge and the advancement of theory in the field of behavioral medicine, including but not limited to understandings of disease prevention, health promotion, health disparities, identification of health risk factors, and interventions designed to reduce health risks, ameliorate health disparities, enhancing all aspects of health. The journal seeks to advance knowledge and theory in these domains in all segments of the population and across the lifespan, in local, national, and global contexts, and with an emphasis on the synergies that exist between biological, psychological, psychosocial, and structural factors as they related to these areas of study and across health states.
Behavioral Medicine publishes original empirical studies (experimental and observational research studies, quantitative and qualitative studies, evaluation studies) as well as clinical/case studies. The journal also publishes review articles, which provide systematic evaluations of the literature and propose alternative and innovative theoretical paradigms, as well as brief reports and responses to articles previously published in Behavioral Medicine.