Internet Psychotherapy

A group of researchers at the University of Zurich have compared the effectiveness of online psychotherapy versus conventional face-to-face therapy in the treatment of depression. They discovered that psychotherapy via the internet was as good as or better than face-to-face therapy. In both the short term and the medium term, patients receiving internet psychotherapy evidenced a decline in depression. In fact, three months after completing eight weeks of treatment, the depression in patients who had been treated online further decreased (those who had been treated conventionally only displayed a minimal decline). For both patient groups (traditional face-to-face and internet psychotherapy), the degree of satisfaction with the treatment and therapists was more or less equally high. Professor Andreas Maercker reported: “Our study is evidence that psychotherapeutic services on the Internet are an effective supplement to therapeutic care.” And in this age of clogged freeways and high fuel prices, internet psychotherapy might prove to be the treatment style-of-choice for many.