E-Therapy: Case Studies, Guiding Principles, and the Clinical Potential of the Internet

The editor's own chapters leave a lot to be desired, with a myopic and narcissistic view of the online world and his contributions to it. While using one's own experiences to help illustrate a point can certainly be helpful, I found all too often the editor going overboard in his chapters. He spent a lot of time describing his experiences not so much with e-therapy, but with things only marginally associated with therapy. I found such chapters to be book fillers, as though there wasn't enough to actually write about this topic.

Overall, a disappointing book. Given some of the professionals involved in it, I would've expected a more balanced review of the challenges facing not only professionals, but consumers as well. Instead, I felt like I got a warmed-over, half-baked idea for a book filled with inaccuracies and irrelevant content.
June 28, 2003

Other chapters are more geared toward hospital and clinic-based telepsychiatry, where distance technology is used to supplement, rather than replace, traditional in-person psychiatric care. The chapter on legal issues rehearses the current legal landscape (which most industry insiders agree is obsolete) but does not offer insight about the widespread movement to update telemedicine law.

If you are a therapist interested in doing e-therapy, you may have to add other books to your library, but I would buy this book for Stofle's and Ainsworth's essays alone. They are worth reading.
June 07, 2003

It also doesn't seem to be concerned with consumer rights, such as what to do if your therapist is just someone pretending to be a therapist, and what to do if you want to report someone but they aren't licensed in your state or country. It doesn't explain what a consumer ought to do if the therapist doesn't act responsibly, short of quitting therapy with them. The consumer is left holding the bag when the therpist is a phoney or clearly isn't the brightest bulb in the pack.

This book's enthusiasm is premature. It is obvious that people can and do benfit from getting information online, but developing relationships with therapists exclsuively online and in email is a bad idea if you haven't met them and can't be sure they are who they say they are, or can't be sure they are trained in what they say they know.

Most of these online therapists don't put a limit on the kinds of problems they will address - they will take your money regardless of their training. How many of them have had training in e-therapy? E-therapy doesn't even exist as a graduate course in psychology training schiool - so how well trained can these therapists be?

Real therapist usually have a few areas of specialty - not everything from schizophrenia to relationship breakup, or pediatrics to gerontology. Many of the larger websites discussed in this book no longer exist - they've gone bankrupt because consumers aren't buying these so-called "services".

These authors are not thinking things through from the perspective of what dangers might be involved for consumers. I'd advise readers to stay away from such one-sided books.
January 12, 2003