Shklarski Liat, Abrams Allison, Bakst Elana
Ramapo College of New Jersey, Mahwah, USA.
Hunter College, New York, NY USA.
J Contemp Psychother. 2021;51(3):265-272. doi: 10.1007/s10879-021-09492-w. Epub 2021 Mar 13.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a new reality on the delivery of psychotherapeutic services. Therapists have had to rapidly adapt to telehealth therapy using various video conferencing technologies while working from spaces that were not necessarily designed for delivering therapy sessions. While COVID-19 continues to be present in therapists' lives and shapes how they provide services, answering the question of whether to meet with clients in person again is a decision laden with complexity and ambivalence. In this mixed-method study, surveys with 169 therapists and interviews with 17 therapists were used to determine the factors that currently influence their attitudes toward resuming traditional in-person psychotherapy in light of COVID-19. We focused on the therapists' personal and professional characteristics to assess their plans to continue with telepsychotherapy or return to a traditional psychotherapy setting. Our findings suggest that positive attitudes toward telepsychotherapy, the lack of an effective vaccine, clients' satisfaction with telepsychotherapy, insurance reimbursement for telepsychotherapy, and negative attitudes toward wearing masks during sessions influenced therapists' decisions on whether or not to return to traditional in-person psychotherapy in the age of COVID-19.
新冠疫情给心理治疗服务的提供带来了新的现实情况。治疗师们不得不迅速适应使用各种视频会议技术进行远程医疗治疗，同时还要在不一定专为提供治疗课程而设计的空间里工作。虽然新冠疫情仍然存在于治疗师的生活中，并影响着他们提供服务的方式，但决定是否再次与客户进行面对面会面是一个充满复杂性和矛盾心理的决定。在这项混合方法研究中，对169名治疗师进行了调查，并对17名治疗师进行了访谈，以确定目前影响他们在新冠疫情背景下对恢复传统面对面心理治疗态度的因素。我们关注治疗师的个人和专业特征，以评估他们继续进行远程心理治疗或回归传统心理治疗环境的计划。我们的研究结果表明，对远程心理治疗的积极态度、缺乏有效的疫苗、客户对远程心理治疗的满意度、远程心理治疗的保险报销，以及在治疗过程中对戴口罩的消极态度，影响了治疗师在新冠疫情时代是否回归传统面对面心理治疗的决定。
