Is Online Counselling Effective?

Since COVID, online therapy has become far more commonplace, and there’s now proper research on how it stacks up against in-person work. In short, online counselling is generally just as effective as in-person therapy in terms of how much people improve, a 2021 meta-analysis in Clinical Psychology Review looked at 57 studies and found videoconference therapy produced equivalent outcomes to in-person therapy, so the evidence really does back this up.

That said, some people just don’t get on with online therapy, and that’s completely valid; some people much prefer being in person. It can come with technical difficulties too, on top of the fact that a lot of communication isn’t verbal; it’s body language, and that can get missed or flattened when you’re working through a screen. But then you’ve got the convenience of being at home in a safe space (in theory), and you’ve got a much larger pool of therapists to choose from if online works for you; you’re not limited to whoever happens to work locally, you’re not limited by your geographical location at all.

And for some people, working online actually has a disinhibition effect, meaning they’ll potentially reveal more, because there’s less proximity between the two of you; you’re not sat in the same room together, and so that social fear that can creep in face to face just isn’t there in the same way.

If you’re weighing up online versus in-person for yourself, that’s something we can talk through together. I offer both in-person sessions (in Swansea) and online sessions. I also offer a no-obligation, 20-minute free consultation.