E.Therapy

Stepping Outside Your Office Virtually

I believe E.Therapy, Distance Therapy, Online Therapy (all the same thing) is now and will continue to be a major aspect of the mental health service delivery system. It is now being used and offers yet another way for populations that cannot, or choose not to, go to a therapist's office. I'm promoting and supporting this movement so we can avoid the way managed care evolved. When insurance companies began managing behavioral healthcare, therapists, and their professional organizations thought it was just a blip on the screen and didn't really get involved in shaping it, you know where that got us. I believe distance therapy is the same kind of movement. Most therapists I talk to about it in my workshops either don't care about it or don't believe it works or will stay around. I'm here to ask you to care!

E.Therapy can offer face to face counseling via streaming video, real-time texting online, asynchronous messages (not in real-time) for people who are time challenged, and audio only via their computer. The biggest problem with online or virtual communications has been confidentiality. This problem has been addressed and solved by an E.Therapy service www.MyTherapyNet.com and by Apple's I.Chat when you are using their Tiger or Leopard operating system in OSX 10.4x or 10.5 on your Macintosh.

There are many, and more everyday, resources to explore and learn about E.Therapy. Here are a few to get started:

An online blog about E.Therapy and more - http://www.onlinetherapyinstituteblog.com/

International Society for Mental Health Online - http://www.ismho.org

Ethical Framework - http://www.onlinetherapyinstitute.com/id43.html

If you are interested in providing E.Therapy to soldiers and their families at home and away. Here are excerpts from my 7-09 blog post about how to get involved:

E.Therapy for US Soldiers and their Families I recently started to look into doing more e.therapy or telemedicine and found a site that meets all the legal and ethical requirements. I consulted with a CAMFT Attorney, and he said MyTherapyNet.com had both of those. I met the originators at my recent CAMFT conference where they mentioned that they were talking to the military about providing online or E.therapy for soldiers and their families. This week I received an e.mail and telephone call from MyTherapyNet.com to see if I was interested in being part of this program. To qualify I needed to be a MHN (Mental Health Network) and Tricare provider. Since I quit taking insurance years ago I had to say no, then wondered just how hard it would be to re-enter the system. What I discovered was that my previous Tri-care and MHN memberships had disappeared for various reasons. I would have to reapply. OK, how hard could that be? I am now looking at 75 pages of forms, and I'm going for it. One, I want to help our soldiers, and two, increase my income working with clients via the internet which I believe is the wave of the future. If you are a MHN and Tricare provider you need only to connect with MyTherapyNet.com to check out the program. I thought others who are not in these system/s might be interested in joining in, so I thought I would pass this information along. Since I'm starting from ground zero, what follows should be enough information for everyone to get started. You'll need the following: _____ 1 Your original e.mail verification of your NPI National Provider Identifier - If you don't already have one I highly recommend getting one. Go to https://nppes.cms.hhs.gov/NPPES/StaticForward.do?forward=static.npistart 2 Copy of your license/s 3 Malpractice insurance 4 All that information you needed for licensure, i.e., graduation info, internships etc. 5 Info about your specialty education and certifications 6 Tax identifier information 7 Mytherapynet.com - e.therapy service - It costs a small fee to register 8 Tricare - For information on how to become a provider go to https://tricare4u.com/apps-portal/tricareapps-app/static/providers/tricare/becomeaprovider.htm 9 MHN Mental Health Network- The person who I've been dialoging with online is: Rafael Linares | Sr. Professional Relations Representative | ': 917.228.2363 | 7: 800-327-3087 | +Mail Stop NY-900-06-04 | / 40 Wall Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10005 I asked him how others could best connect with him and he said to send e.mail to [email protected] _____ This is another one of those tests in getting the paperwork right. I've been doing this for years, and it's a piece of cake. It is although time consuming as I look for ALL those documents. If you have any questions about the applications, just shoot me an e.mail at [email protected] and I'll do my best to answer your questions. Put E.Therapy in the subject line so it doesn't get lost in junk mail. If you want to talk about it, call 415.356.9809 and let me know a good time to call you back. If your needs are more than a 5 minute conversation, that moves into consultation which I bill at $3/minute. Talk fast. I truly want this project to work and hope it can help your practice grow as well. Onward Linda