Benefits of Online Counselling

Online Counselling, also known as online therapy or e-counselling, is becoming very popular with people moving to online services than traditional methods for anything they need. This was due to the pandemic also that people are worried about getting the infection that gave a boost to using online services for health-related and other needs. There are several well-known benefits of online counselling, we have elaborated here- 

• Like a normal health consultation, in a telehealth service, people can connect with an online therapist to get support on any kind of mental health challenges they are facing.
• Keeping in mind the increasing numbers of internet users seeking mental health support online, numerous health and mental health assistance providers have started their services online. Some of these have launched online mental health counselling platforms that offer therapy through different modes to thousands of internet users seeking mental health support. 
• A user needs a device with an internet connection and they can connect with a therapist on audio-video calling apps like skype, zoom, WhatsApp, google meet etc.
• Email and chat counselling is also considered to be very effective as it encourages clients to express themselves in more thoughtful, self-reflective and insightful ways. It also may be a quite suitable way of communicating for those clients who experience difficulty in expressing themselves verbally. 
• Emails and chat such as instant messenger apps, allows both the client and the therapist to give close attention to their communication and reflect on their thoughts and feelings before expressing. 
• As per some researches, it also has been proved that online cognitive behaviour therapy is as effective as traditional CBT for several mental health concerns, including depression and anxiety.
• Online counselling is also more economical than traditional counselling as once can save the cost of travelling to a doctor's clinic. A user can take counselling sessions place from the comfort their home saving on transport costs.
• Online counselling offers the client a level of anonymity that help them in reducing the fear due to social stigma and thus encourage them to seek help when they might be hesitating.

Finally, the benefits of online counselling for the clients are tremendous as it gives the client more control from choosing a psychologist, time of appointments, to the mode of communication while improving the effectiveness of the counselling process by increasing the level of self-disclosure, keeping the anonymity and hence a more effective service to the client.