Relationship Trouble? Research Shows Online Couples and Marriage Counseling Can Help.
Counseling can make a huge difference in whether or not your relationship overcomes the hurdles that life inevitably puts in its way. Unfortunately, a lot of couples don’t get the counseling they need for a variety of reasons, including fear of social stigma, discomfort opening up to strangers, as well as lack of accessibility, convenience, and affordability.
However, recent advancements in telehealth practices are starting to remove a lot of the most common barriers to good mental healthcare. As a result, online relationship and marriage counseling services like ReGain are literally changing lives.
According to a recent survey in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, the four most common reasons for divorce are lack of love or intimacy; communication problems; lack of sympathy, respect, and trust; and growing apart. As the researches behind the survey point out, these results show that “behavioral motives” for divorce are waning while “psychological and emotional divorce motives” are on the rise.
And believe it or not, that’s actually a good thing. Issues like domestic violence, addiction, and infidelity can be almost impossible to overcome. But psychological and emotional issues like lack of intimacy, communication, sympathy, trust? Those are all things a couple can solve if they are willing to get professional help.
A lot of mental health experts were rightly skeptical about online therapy when people first started trying it. They were concerned that therapists wouldn’t have the opportunity to observe things like tone of voice, body language, and overall demeanor, which can be crucial to psychological assessment and diagnosis.
They were concerned that therapists wouldn’t be able to forge personal relationships with patients via teleconferencing. And they were concerned that people wouldn’t be able to adequately communicate their feelings and emotions electronically.
Despite these concerns, the research consistently shows that online therapy works just as well as traditional therapy for a whole variety of issues.
A 2014 study from the Journal of Affective Disorders found that online treatment was just as effective in treating depression as face-to-face treatment.
A 2018 study from the Journal of Psychological Disorders found that online cognitive behavioral therapy is equally as effective as face-to-face treatment for major depression, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder.
And another 2014 study from Behaviour Research and Therapy found that online cognitive behavioral therapy was an effective and affordable way to treat anxiety disorders.
Moreover, online-only providers are not allowed to make official diagnoses and cannot prescribe medications. However, counseling from ReGain can help for the vast majority of issues that plague relationships.
Source:
Futurism
