online therapy

Hello all! In an effort to save you some pain and trouble, I thought I'd share my first experience with e-therapy and the rather horrible experience I had using an online therapy site. I suffer from an anxiety disorder and decided to give e-therapy.

When I signed up with the website, I was under the impression that I was signing up and paying for instant online access to a therapist and an 8 week session of Cognitive Behavoiral Therapy or CBT. After all, that's what was being advertised. As I began my sessions I had many questions that were not answered in the text provided. So I decided to try the online chat feature of the website, where supposedly I could contact the on-call therapist at my leisure. Too bad there is never a therapist actually online to help you. For several days I would wait online for hours for my assigned therapist to come online, even though she was listed as being available on the website.

After contacting customer support about the issue, I was told to make an appointment with my therapist. Now what's the point of having an on-call online chat feature, if I have to make an appointment with the therapist? And why is she listed as being online for on-call support, when she never is? That's not at all what was advertised. After several days of struggling through the sessions by myself with no support from a therapist or from customer service, I decided to take advantage of the money-back guarantee.

When I contacted customer support through chat, I got a man by the name of Carl, who supposedly is the owner of the site. When I explained my situation, he proceeded to tell me that I was lying and that his therapists "work hard". Over the next half hour he called me "rude" and degraded me repeatedly. Not only is that bad customer service, but that's incredibly detrimental to someone with an anxiety disorder. It took several visits with my regular therapist to overcome the damage he did.

From my experience, I can tell you that the people at the online therapy site are not only unprofessional, but in my opinion they have no business working in the mental health field. I'm not sure I'll try e-therapy again, but if you do, please be careful about what sites you choose. Good luck!

Oh wow, AliBel! That does sound like a horrible experience! I am so sorry that happened to you.

Just wanted to give you a hug (((((( AliBel ))))))) That's awful and people need to know that. Thanks for sharing.

That is terrible. How dare the owner call you rude. I'm sorry you had this experience, but thank you for sharing so others know to stay away from that website!!

Unfortunately, there are just too many ways to scam people on the internet since it is so unregulated. You have to be very, very careful. You never said, did you get your money refunded?

Thank you everyone for the good thoughts! What a wonderful community this is. I did finally get my money back, thankfully.

Wow! I am glad that you got your money back.. Sorry you had to go through that experience!

hi, sorry you had such a bad experience with online therapy and I'm glad you got your money back. Thankfully not all online experiences are like that, but horrible when you encounter something that is Is your regular T going to try CBT with you or have any ideas of where you could do some CBT therapy in a much better way?

Ali, so sorry you had such a terrible experience, but thanks so much for sharing with us. I had actually thought about online therapy at one point, but now - no thanks!
Hope you're doing better!

AilBel

wow etherapy though; sounds interesting but thanks for the warning- I hope you can find the help that you need; It is horrible that they are advertising such help but not providing it- for someone that had trouble getting into therapy (myself i mean) and if I had tried etherapy and that happened; I would see it as a sign, a big one of not to get involved maybe-- but who knows that just one thought that popped in my head.. maybe it would encourage more to go in to a group or human contact therapy

I do wish you well and sorry to read that you had a horrible experience- at least you got refunded as well.

"A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market." Charles Lamb
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da7StUzVh3s

I know this is kind of an old post, but I just wanted to share that not all online therapists are bad. I used someone online for about 6 months..it was not through a "e-therapy" site but a private therapist who utilizes an online option. He was awesome, and just what I needed at that point in my life--I would not have been able to look someone in the face to talk, and it would have been really hard to schedule time to go into an office once a week. If anyone is interested, I would gladly refer them to him..he helped me tremendously :-)

The problem I have with this thread is that it condemns all internet therapy based on an experience with just one provider.Only one response in this thread picked up on the injustice of this discriminatory conclusion.If we are to reject health providers based on one experience with one,then we would all have to stay home and trying to take care of ourselves;rejecting entire professions based on one unfortunate experience.

The article does address an ethical problem that occurs in all forms of therapy,the charging of fees for sessions in which little and sometimes no meaningful service is provided for the client.I struggled with this problem for years,even resorting to the use of collection agencies to collect money from those who either didn't have the money to pay for services they had contracted for or those who just didn't want to pay any more than they already had.Finally I reached a moral solution which would have resolved the animosity expressed in this thread;I stopped charging any fees for my online services.It's amazing how quickly that solution prevents disputes from occurring!