Online therapy in the de-escalation of confinement

Online therapy is capable of continuing to provide advantages during the confinement stage.

After the first shock we have suffered as a society as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, we are at a time when we are moving towards progressive de-escalation, phases, the "new normality", new affective codes, the first contacts and meetings with family and friends...

But are we are we, as citizens, ready to return to our routines and responsibilities as we had conceived them? as we had conceived them before the state of alarm?

Many of the patients that we have the privilege of accompanying at this time from the team that makes up Centro TAP are asking us this question. We convey to them the need to continue building "today", without anticipating "tomorrow" and without dwelling on "yesterday"; part of our objective for them is to provide them with tools for the management of uncertainty, fear, discomfort and anxiety that this crisis has produced or that have been enhanced by it.

The usefulness of online therapy in the pandemic crisis.

Our therapeutic format continues to be exclusively online as of today, since we are strong advocates of progressive changes and adjusted to the needs of our patients. We will return to a face-to-face format, but these almost three months have allowed us to have more experimentation in telecare, online psychology or online therapy. During this time we have been able to assess with our patients the unquestionable value of this formula.

There are many benefits we have found in online therapy from the current volume of appointments we have experienced:

• Facilitates regularity between sessions
• It caters to the patient's reduced mobility needs.
• It has greater time agility
• It has high time flexibility
• It takes place in a safe and secure environment
• No geographical limitation
• Direct benefit of the digital resources currently available to us
• Greater intimacy

We suspect that this online format, for many professionals and for many patients, was an "aberration" in the processes of intervention and psychological help. Ignorance often leads us to prejudge processes and label them. We have now experienced video calls, videoconferences, teleworking and online therapy as a society, but now that we have put in value its functionality, and we can attest with experimentation that the format works, that it has validity and reliability and that there is an improvement in our psychological state after each of the online sessions that have been held in the open processes of therapy.

From Centro TAP we will continue to bet on this formula of intervention in our therapeutic processes, as well as in the online training actions that we have launched; currently we have three in this format: Emotional Management, Emotional Intelligence for Families and Emotional Accompaniment to the Postpartum.

We are preparing more training offerings with this formula, we want to continue betting on the quality of the training service now online. We know that in the network there are many free offers that can initially "satiate" the need to learn of the consumer, but we want to compete against this gratuity with quality, rigor and professionalism, the team of professionals who form TAP Center is highly qualified to offer an unsurpassed learning experience.

As the Community of Madrid moves forward in its de-escalation phases, we will continue to combine our services in both formats, face-to-face and online.We want to reach all the people who need us without limitations or restrictions in terms of geography, mobility or time. You can access our contact information by accessing our professional profile here.

Author: Patricia Gutiérrez Albaladejo. General Health Psychologist M-226644.