Blog Archives

In my last blog, I briefly looked at the advantages of online therapy. However, the growth of online therapy is not without its critics. I may have given the impression in my previous blog that online therapy has nothing but positive implications. However, this blog briefly examines some of the main criticisms that have been levelled against online therapy. This loist is not exhaustive but hopefully covers the key concerns:

Legal and ethical considerations: As Internet counselling services grow, attention will have to be focused on the specialist construction of a legal and ethical code for this type of work. Cyberspace transcends state and international borders, therefore, there are many legal and regulatory concerns. For example, client/doctor confidentiality regulations differ from one jurisdiction to another. It may not be legal for a clinician to provide chat-room services to problem gamblers who are in a jurisdiction in which the clinician is not licensed. Furthermore, some problem gamblers may be excluded from telehealth services because they lack the financial resources to access the Internet. One potential ethical and legal dilemma is the extent to which service quality can be ensured. It is possible that individuals who register to provide counselling services online do not have the qualifications and skills they advertise. They may not even be licensed to practice. There are also issues regarding the conduct of practitioners engaged in all forms of telecommunication therapy. For example: issues of informed consent, the security of electronic medical records, electronic claims submissions and so forth. Therapy provided over the Internet holds promise but there is a need to check that it works and see to it that, if it is done then it is done well. Underlying guidelines that are applicable to all forms of counselling are that: (i) the therapist must be trained, supervised and accountable with qualifications that can be checked against a list held by a mainstream organisation, and (ii) the nature of the contract between client and practitioner must be spelled out so clients understand the boundaries of what they are receiving for what they are paying.
Effectiveness of online therapy: There are a growing number of evaluation studies that have examined whether online therapy is an effective treatment approach. With specific regard to problem gambling, my research colleague Dr. Gerry Cooper reported that about 70% spoke of how they benefited from their exposure to and involvement with GAweb, an online peer support group. An evaluation that I carried out with Dr. Richard Wood of Gam-Aid also showed that participants derived great benefit from using the online service and was particularly attractive for problem online gamblers (that are already comfortable with interacting online).
Confidentiality: Online therapy may compromise privacy and confidentiality, particularly if a skilled computer ‘hacker’ is determined to locate information about a particular individual. There is also some evidence that as more personal information is required of counselling sites online, the attractiveness of these sites is reduced. On the other hand, one of the things that the Internet is especially helpful with is its ability to afford the consumer the control over self-disclosure. In this way, individuals may overestimate the degree to which their information is safe and secure from computer hackers.
Encryption: No online therapist can confidently promise a problem gamblers confidentiality given the limitations of the medium. That being said, there are some sites that now offer secure messaging systems that offer the same level of protection as banking institutions. To protect confidentiality, care will have to be taken to prevent inappropriate and deliberate hacking into counselling sessions on the Internet. There will need to be a continuous upgrading of technology to stay ahead of hackers’ ability to breach security.
Complicated payment structures: Given the cross-national nature of the Internet, there may be complicated pay structures for problem gamblers to overcome when selecting a therapist. While universally-accepted credit cards might actually make payment easier (since one can use their credit card online and the credit card company will automatically calculate the currency exchange for the transaction), one may not immediately understand how much the online counselling has cost in their own currency. They may not know this until their credit card invoice arrives at a later date.
Cost-effectiveness to the therapist: For the therapist, there is the problem that online counselling may be as time consuming as face-to-face therapy with substantially less financial remuneration.
Identity problems: One of the major potential problems is that online problem gamblers may not be who they say they are, i.e., counsellors may not always know the true identity of their online clients (although identity is an issue only applicable to those services that are not anonymous). This is clearly a major issue since some assumptions (rightly or wrongly) are made by the clinician depending on what the problem gambler presents (including age and other demographics). However, to some extent, these issues also apply to telephone and face-to-face counselling as the therapist has to accept what is said at face value. Additionally, some might argue that merely responding to the words that a problem gambler chooses to use necessitates more focus on the part of the therapist. As a result, this may lead to a more democratic counselling environment. In other words, the role of therapist and problem gambler becomes more equal in this situation. Some therapists may have difficulty adapting to these new roles.
Severity of client problems: Some clients’ problems may be just too severe to be dealt with over the Internet. To some extent, there can always be contingencies, but because people can come from anywhere in the world and have a multitude of circumstances, online clinicians may be hard-pressed to meet everyone’s needs. It is important to acknowledge that this is not a panacea; that online help will not solve everybody’s problems (to be sure, those who are illiterate will likely have a difficult time of it without some additional support nearby). On the other hand, it is likely to go a long way in helping a great many more people than otherwise would have been the case.
Client referral problems: One obvious difficulty for the counsellor is how to go about making a referral for someone in a faraway town or another country. Once again, one would need to establish basic contingencies. Over time, it could be expected there would be many more international-regional clearinghouses regarding where to get immediate assistance, but to date it is very difficult to know what services are available for many parts of the world.
Establishing client rapport: It could perhaps be argued that there might be difficulty in establishing rapport with someone that the therapist has never seen. This is an interesting area where clearly more information is needed. One might also argue that because the problem gambler is in a more equal relationship with the therapist, they will feel more comfort. That is, since the problem gambler controls all of the personal disclosure levers, rapport might be established much more easily.
No face-to-face contact: Online therapy leads to a loss of non-verbal communication cues such as particular body language, voice volume and tone of voice. Furthermore, the lack of face-to-face interaction between problem gambler and therapist could result in a wrong referral or diagnosis. What is known about online communication where cues are filtered out, is that it typically takes more work to accomplish a task where more than one person is involved. It may be the case that with time and experience, therapists who work online will develop skills that will help them compensate for the absence of visual cues. For example, they might become much more skilled and precise with the words they choose to use.
Incomplete information: The written information provided in online therapy may be incomplete. Online therapy (via e-mail) may not allow the opportunity for immediate follow-up questions. Making a provisional recommendation or diagnosis is fraught with potential problems. For instance, a problem gambler may describe problems that are symptomatic of other more serious underlying disorders. However, diagnostic processes are quite heterogeneous practices even in face-to-face settings. Diagnoses are often provisional and therapists usually require more information to validate initial observations. In fact, clinicians might have better access to their clients through e-mail than trying to track them down face-to-face or exchanging telephone answer messages, should they need further information. Still, the information derived from problem gamblers in online formats may be unverifiable, more so than in face-to-face contexts.
Loss of therapist contact: Although perhaps more of a possibility than a reality, therapists can just ‘disappear’ only to re-emerge weeks later saying that their server failed and/or leave a problem gambler mid-therapy with little that the problem gambler can do about it. The same problem could occur with some clinicians in face-to-face settings although being online may be more of a problem in finding out what has happened.
Commercial exploitation: Consumers theoretically are not always as anonymous as they might think when they visit health sites because some sites share visitors’ personal health information with advertisers and business partners without consumers’ knowledge or permission. Some sites allow third-party advertisers to collect visitors’ personal information without disclosing this practice. As a result, visitors may get e-mails from advertisers about their products and services. Information can be collected during a variety of tasks including the visiting of chat rooms and bulletin boards, searching for information, subscribing to electronic newsletters, e-mailing articles to friends or filling out health-assessment forms. This allows third parties to build detailed, personally identified profiles of individuals’ health conditions and patterns of Internet use. In relation to gamblers, this is a real issue. By virtue of posting to places where problem gamblers talk to each other online with an accurate e-mail address shown, online gambling operators have the potential to collect such information in order to later send junk e-mail promoting their gambling websites. Other questionable and fraudulent marketing practices by online operators have also been outlined in my previous blogs.
Emergency situations: Being online and geographically distant has the potential to cause problems in an acute situation. For instance, if a clinician does not know where a problem gambler lives or can be located, they cannot call for help in the case of an emergency such as a suicidal threat.
Convenience: Although convenience was outlined as an advantage in the previous section, it can also have a downside. For instance, it may mean that the problem gambler is less likely to draw on their own existing coping strategies and use the online therapist as a convenient crutch (something which is actively discouraged in face-to-face therapy).

Hopefully this blog has redressed the balance of my previous blog on the positive benefits of online therapy. Anyone that seeks online advice, help, and/or treatment needs to carefully do their own cost-benefit analysis as to whether such an online service will be of direct benefit to them after taking into account some of the disadvantages outlined here.

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Bloom, W. J. (1998). The ethical practice of Web Counseling. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 26 (1), 53-59.

Connall, J. (2000). At your fingertips: Five online options. Psychology Today, May/June, 40.

Griffiths, M.D. (2001). Online therapy: A cause for concern? The Psychologist: Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 14, 244-248.

Griffiths, M.D. (2005). Online therapy for addictive behaviors. CyberPsychology and Behavior, 8, 555-561.

Griffiths, M.D. (2010). Online advice, guidance and counseling for problem gamblers. In M. Manuela Cunha, António Tavares & Ricardo Simões (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Developments in e-Health and Telemedicine: Technological and Social Perspectives (pp. 1116-1132). Hershey, Pennsylvania: Idea Publishing.

Griffiths, M.D. & Cooper, G. (2003). Online therapy: Implications for problem gamblers and clinicians, British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 13, 113-135.

Rabasca, L. (2000). Self-help sites: A blessing or a bane? APA Monitor on Psychology, 31(4), 28-30.

Segall, R. (2000). Online shrinks: The inside story. Psychology Today, May/June, 38-43.

Wood, R.T.A. & Griffiths, M.D. (2007). Online guidance, advice, and support for problem gamblers and concerned relatives and friends: An evaluation of the Gam-Aid pilot service. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 35, 373-389.

Wood, R. T., & Wood, S. A. (2009). An evaluation of two United Kingdom online support forums designed to help people with gambling issues. Journal of Gambling Issues, 23, 5-30.

Posted in Addiction, Compulsion, Cyberpsychology, Gambling, Gambling addiction, I.T., Internet addiction, Internet gambling, Obsession, Online addictions, Online gambling, Psychology, Technological addiction, Technology

Net gains: What are the benefits of online therapy for problem gamblers and clinicians?

Sep 15

Posted by drmarkgriffiths

“A 35-year old man comes home very late from a night out at the casino having lost all his savings at the roulette wheel. Unable to sleep, he logs onto the Internet and locates a self-help site for problem gambling and fills out a 20-item gambling checklist. Within a few hours he receives an E-mail which suggests he may have an undiagnosed gambling disorder. He is invited to revisit the site to learn more about his possible gambling disorder, seek further advice from an online gambling counsellor and join an online gambling self-help group” (from Griffiths and Cooper, 2003)

On initial examination, this fictitious scenario appears of little concern until a number of questions raise serious concerns. For instance, who scored the gambling test? Who will monitor the gambling self-help group? Who will give online counselling advice for the gambling problem? Does the counsellor have legitimate qualifications and experience regarding gambling problems? Who sponsors the gambling website? What influence do the sponsors have over content of the site? Do the sponsors have access to visitor data collected by the website? These are all questions that may not be raised by a problem gambler in crisis seeking help but they are important questions that require answers. Of course, these are also questions that should apply to any comparable face-to-face interventions.

The Internet could be viewed as just a further extension of technology being used to transmit and receive communications between the helper and the helped. If gambling practitioners shun the new technologies, others who might have questionable ethics will likely come in to fill the clinical vacuum. Online therapy is growing. Furthermore, its growth appears to outstrip any efforts to organize, limit and regulate it. It has been claimed that online therapy is a viable alternative source of help when traditional psychotherapy is not accessible. Proponents claim it is effective, private and conducted by skilled, qualified, ethical professionals. It is further claimed that for some people, it is the only way they either can or will get help (from professional therapists and/or self-help groups).

Psychological services provided on the Internet range from basic information sites about specific disorders, to self-help sites that assess a person’s problem, to comprehensive psychotherapy services offering assessment, diagnosis and intervention. Most experts agree that online therapy currently available is not traditional psychotherapy. For many, it appears to be an alternative for those who are either unable or reluctant to seek face-to-face treatment. There have been many reasons put forward as to why online assistance is advantageous. Here are the main ones:

Online therapy is convenient: Online therapy is convenient to deliver, and can provide a way to seek instant advice or get quick and discreet information. In the case of counselling by E-mail, one needs to keep in mind that therapy per se can occur either via professionally delivered formats or via peer-delivered self-help groups. In addition, the counselling might not necessarily be restricted to E-mail; some might augment face-to-face counselling with E-mail ‘booster’ sessions. In this way, correspondence happens at the convenience of both the client and the counsellor. Online therapy avoids the need for scheduling and the setting of appointments, although for those who want them, appointments can be scheduled over a potential 24-hour period. For problem gamblers who might have a sense of increased risk or vulnerability, they can take immediate action via online interventions, as these are available on demand and at any time. Crisis workers often report that personal crises occur beyond normal office hours, making it difficult for people to obtain help from mental health clinicians and the like. If a problem gambler has lost track of time at the casino only to depart depressed, broke, and suicidal at 4am in the morning, they can perhaps reach someone at that hour who will be understanding, empathic and knowledgeable. They likely have a better chance of finding someone at an online peer-support site like GamTalk (gamtalk.org) than they would at their local mental health centre.
Online therapy is cost-effective for clients: Compared with traditional face-to-face therapies, online therapy is cheaper. This is a big selling point often used by those selling their services online (for instance, some sites advertise their online services as ‘less than the customary cost of a private therapy session’ or ‘help and therapy at a reasonable fee’). This is obviously an advantage to those who may have low financial resources. It may also allow practitioners to provide services to more clients because less time is spent travelling to see them. Since there are financial consequences for a gambler, cheaper forms of therapy such as online therapy may be a preferred option out of necessity rather than choice. The cost factor is particularly important in countries where people are often forced to pay for health care (for example, in the United States). With the Internet, quality information and support (even if treatment is not yet freely available online) is available without cost. Arguably, one needs Internet access, but this too is becoming more freely available, and conceivably, even those who are homeless would be able to utilize such services through places like public libraries (although, literacy would continue to be an important requirement).
Online therapy overcomes barriers that otherwise may prevent people from seeking face-to-face help: There are many different groups of people who might benefit from online therapy. For example, those who are (i) physically disabled, (ii) agoraphobic, (iii) geographically isolated and/or do not have access to a nearby therapist (military personnel, prison inmates, housebound individuals etc.), (iv) linguistically isolated, and (v) embarrassed, anxious and/or too nervous to talk about their problems face-to-face with someone, and/or those who have never been to a therapist before might benefit from online therapy. Some like those with agoraphobia and/or the geographically isolated, might be more susceptible to activities like online gambling because they either tend not to leave home much or they do not have access to more traditional gambling facilities (like casinos, bingo halls, racetracks and so forth). It is clear that those that are most in need of help (whether it is for mental health problems, substance abuse or problem gambling often do not receive it).
Online therapy helps to overcome social stigma: The social stigma of seeing a therapist can be the source of profound anxiety for some people. However, online psychotherapists offer clients a degree of anonymity that reduces the potential stigma. Gambling may be particularly stigmatic for some because they may find it is a self-initiated problem. Others have found that the issue of stigma has caused some problem gamblers to avoid seeking treatment. Furthermore, in an exploratory study, my research colleague Dr. Gerry Cooper found that there was a correlation between higher levels of concerns about stigma and the absence of treatment utilization, and that lurking (i.e., visiting but not registering presence to other users) at a problem gambling support group website made it easier for many to seek help including face-to-face help. It should also be noted that there is strong emerging evidence for the power and effectiveness of narrative therapies. For example, there is some evidence to suggest that a person’s use of positive emotion words in their written articulations of difficult or problematic experiences lead to improved health changes.
Online therapy allows therapists to reach an exponential amount of people: Given the truly international cross-border nature of the Internet, therapists have a potential global clientele. Furthermore, gambling itself has been described as the ‘international language’ and has spread almost everywhere within international arenas.

From the brief outline presented here, it would appear that in some situations, online therapy can be helpful – at least to some specific sub-groups of society, some of which may include problem gamblers. Furthermore, online therapists will argue that there are responsible, competent, ethical mental health professionals forming effective helping relationships via the Internet, and that these relationships help and heal. However, online therapy is not appropriate for everyone. As with any new frontier, there are some issues to consider before trying it. In my next blog I will look at some of the downsides of online therapy.