Telepsychology revolution in the mental health care delivery: a global overview of emerging clinical and legal issues.

UNLABELLED

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote healthcare delivery by technological devices has become a growing practice. It represented an unprecedented change in personal and professional activities, allowing health specialists to continue working online by assisting their patients from home. Psychological practice greatly benefited from this innovation, guaranteeing diagnostic and therapeutic effectiveness through cyber counseling. However, in many countries there have been no enactments of specific laws nor adaptations of the professional deontological code aimed at regulating this new psychological practice dimension, generally defined as telepsychology. This article aims to briefly review the scientific literature on this tool's effectiveness and especially analyze the legal and operational framework in which telepsychology has been to date practiced in Italy and other national realities, thus providing a global overview that may be useful to understand how to improve this valuable but still immature practice.

KEY POINTS

The coronavirus pandemic exposed to short- and long-term increase in psychological and psychiatric imbalances.Cyber counseling has been proven to be effective to treat a wide range of psychological disorders.Many of the current national and international legislations concerning the telepsychology practice are still immature. legal frameworks are required for each national context to guarantee a safe and effective cyber counseling delivery.