Online counseling

Online counseling is the provision of professional mental health counseling services through the Internet. Services are typically offered via email, real-time chat, and video conferencing. Some clients use online counseling in conjunction with traditional psychotherapy, or nutritional counseling, and a growing number of clients are using online counseling as a replacement for office visits.

While some form of tele-psychology has been available for over 35 years, the advent of internet video chat systems and the increasing penetration of broadband has resulted in a growing movement towards online therapy. Clients are using videoconferencing, live chat and email with professional psychologists in place of or in addition to face-to-face meetings.

Since the beginning of the internet in 1972, several creative people perceived the potential of the internet for the therapeutic communication. At the time the internet went public, this launch went hand in hand with the development of the first self-help groups on the internet who were, in that time, very popular. In 1995, Martha Ainsworth had a couple of psychological complaints where she wanted to get rid of it, so she began searching for a competent therapist. Because her travel requirements made it difficult for her to consult a face-to-face therapist, she searched for an effective alternative online, but only found a dozen webpages that offered online treatment for psychological complaints. Afterwards, Martha Ainsworth wanted to reach the general public with her experiences and founded a sort of clearinghouse for mental health websites, named Metanoia. This database seemed to be a very efficient store-room and by the year 2000, this clearinghouse contained over 250 websites of private practices, and more than 700 online clinics where a therapist could be contacted.

According to metanoia.org, the first service to offer online mental healthcare was "Ask Uncle Ezra", created by staff of Cornell University in 1986 for students. By mid-1995 several fee-based online services offering mental health advice had appeared.

Between 1994 and 2002, a group of trained volunteer crisis counselors called "Samaritans", began providing suicide prevention services via email.

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