Teletherapy, or online therapy, is a safe way for your therapist to connect with you and provide you with the counseling and support that you seek when coming into the office and having face-to-face sessions is challenging.
Online therapy is a helpful way to begin and continue your therapy journey if you are:
- maintaining social distancing recommendations during the CoVid-19 pandemic
- managing time constraints while juggling home and work responsibilities
- feeling ill but prefer to keep your appointment and receive support
- working unconventional hours and need flexibility with your appointments
- living in a rural area and have trouble traveling to in-person sessions
- coping with chronic illness that makes traveling to appointments difficult.
How Does Teletherapy Work?
From the safety and comfort of your home, you and your therapist will be able to connect online or on the phone and work on alleviating your stress and accomplishing your goals. We are able to meet with you virtually for individual therapy sessions as well as couples and family therapy sessions where different family members might be in different physical locations.
Online therapy sessions with younger children, similar to in-person counseling, will take different forms depending on your reasons for seeking support. We utilize various approaches including play therapy, talk therapy, cognitive behavioral strategies, mindfulness techniques and parent coaching depending on the clinical issues being addressed and what is deemed most helpful.
Sometimes your therapist will meet with the parent alone at the beginning or at the end of the session, depending on the age of the child. While other times, the session may include both the parent and child for a portion or for the entire session. Older children and teens may have individual sessions and a parent session at a different time. At Evolve, we tailor our approach depending on the needs of your child or teen and your entire family.
Are Online Therapy Sessions Private?
At Evolve Psychological Services, teletherapy sessions can be conducted over video via our Client Portal through TherapyNotes, a private, secure videoconferencing and scheduling platform. This platform is designed for use by medical professionals and is compliant with HIPAA guidelines. We also utilize Doxy, another HIPAA compliant system, as a backup system when necessary.
To maintain privacy and confidentiality for teletherapy sessions, we ask that you identify a private and secure room before engaging in any online therapy sessions. Sessions should not be recorded or shared and all of the confidentiality rules that apply to in-person sessions are applied in teletherapy sessions. Our Teletherapy Consent Form provides further details about our guidelines for online sessions.
Current clients can learn more about how to access and utilize our TherapyNotes Client Portal for teletherapy on the FAQ’s Client Portal page.
Are Teletherapy Sessions Effective?
Teletherapy is an effective form of health care delivery that has been utilized for many years across different disciplines. Research has shown that both therapists and clients have found online therapy to be as effective as in-person therapy for a variety of clinical issues including depression, anxiety, behavioral difficulties, relationship problems, family conflict and other commonly experienced areas of difficulty.
Research has also shown that teletherapy is not an appropriate method to connect with clients who are experiencing a severe level of distress such as psychotic symptoms, thoughts of suicide, attempts to harm oneself, attempts to harm someone else and other high-risk symptoms and behaviors.
Do I Need to Live in NJ or NY to Work with a Therapist at Evolve?
Evolve has two office locations, one in New York City and one in Montclair, New Jersey. Licensing guidelines for both states requires that our therapists work with clients who are residents in the states that we are licensed. We have one therapist in our New York location and several therapists in our New Jersey location who are available to help via teletherapy.
How Do I Get Started?
You can give us today at (973) 891-0793 to get things started. We will gather some information about your needs and determine if there is a therapist on our team that is a potentially good fit.
If you decide that you would like to begin your online therapy journey with us, we will schedule your appointment and ask you to print and complete some intake paperwork on our Forms page. We will ask you to return the paperwork to us over email before your first appointment so that we are ready to get started.
To make the most out of your appointment, we ask that you find a quiet, private space to have your teletherapy session, secure a strong internet connection, check in to your therapists’ Doxy.me virtual “waiting room” a few minutes before your appointment, ensure that your device is fully charged and consider using headphones for improved sound quality.
Whether you are seeking help for your child or teen or for yourself, we are ready and equipped to help you virtually just as if you were in person at the office.
Please call us today at (973) 891-0793 to see how we can help and when we can get started.
