Welcome to the Very Well Mind podcast. We've interviewed over 100 authors, experts, entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, and others to help you learn strategies to care for your mental health.

This episode is hosted by psychotherapist and bestselling author Amy Morin. Now let's get into the episode.

Okay. You're listening to a special bonus edition of the Very Well Mind podcast. We usually share a guest episode on Mondays and my quick Friday fix episodes on Fridays. But today, we're releasing this special episode

to talk about online therapy. We wanted to create a bonus episode where we could take a deep

dive into the topic, much more than we could do on a typical Friday fix episode.

So on today's show, I'm going to talk about who online therapy is for and who it isn't for,

the advantages of seeing an online therapist, misconceptions about online treatment, and what you should do

before you sign up for therapy. Before we dive in, I'll take a minute and explain what online

therapy is and how it's changed over the years. A few years ago, online therapy sites started cropping up,

and they offered access to do talk therapy via video or chat. Those services expanded as more

competition grew. New service providers meant new services were being offered, like phone therapy,

and now there's psychiatry and support groups that you can access online too.

Of course, during the pandemic, we saw a huge shift in online therapy. There used to be laws that

said therapists couldn't see somebody outside the state where they were licensed, but those laws

were relaxed, and a lot of people who had been seeing a therapist in person just shifted to seeing their

therapist online. And then online therapy directory started popping up, which made things a little

bit confusing. A directory just lists people who offer online therapy. But the directory likely gets

paid for the listing and they aren't actually the company in charge of all the

therapists. That's a little bit different than the service providers like TalkSpace or BetterHelp,

who have a website where people get the treatment, and there's some oversight from them in terms of

matching you with the therapist, and even switching you to a new therapist if you aren't happy

with the first one.

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