Online Shrinks

With increasing penetration of internet into our daily lives and the increasing laziness of people to get out of their houses has given birth to online therapy. Internet has revolutionized shopping, friendship, communication, education, dating, entertainment, gambling, porn, businesses and the list just keeps going on. Although not yet in big time practice, this is being looked at very closely. Particularly the use of online medicine and diagnosis is being looked at closely to put the same into practice in Psychotherapy. People when facing some king of illness or disease are first consulting online resources such as Google’s vast database and forums where people have already discussed their problems. This gives a person a good idea of the disease that she has and can feel relaxed that the cure is available. People do not usually feel comfortable going to doctors for their personal problems related to their sex or mental illness.
But is consulting an online shrink the same as seeing a shrink in person? Debates are currently going on with a few institutes carrying out controlled trials to gauge the effectiveness of this trial. A few unlicensed commercial shrinks are also providing online counseling for people. A few of the major problems associated with online therapy is that the psychologist loses the important sing of asserting a patients response to a question, that is the body language. Even if cameras are used, they can only focus on the face but not the entire body. Still optimistic psychologists argue that what tools are lost with body language are gained with a clear understanding of the patients consciousness. This is more effective when people are tying instead of taking. While typing a patient has time to think and rethink his answer to every question. But this practice needs further study and worse case scenarios need to be outlined.