Posted by Azy Barak at the ISMHO Discussion Forums, March 4, 2005

First - there are no guidelines or laws that refer to it. Professional (and nonprofessional) do whatever they wish, with no one and no code to guide them in regard to right and wrong.

Second - there are some discussions of online counseling that take place in local (rather small in attendance) conferences, professional boards, committees, etc. A broad spectrum of ideas and opinions are raised in these discussions with no decisive or overruling voice.

Third - several therapists offer online therapy. Online therapy is provided in different ways (e.g., email, forum, chat). There is no open statistics as to how many clients use these services. Obviously, no one knows about effectiveness or any measure regarding success of these services, let alone ethical conduct.

Fourth - Almost all online therapists I know have had no specific professional training in providing online therapy. Also, there is no formal supervision or serious guidance of any type.

Fifth - some therapists offer "online advice," mainly through forums. Naturally, therapists differ in their psychological/philosophical approach, but this is expected. However, in regard to adopting the online channel to provide advice - I frequently see clear errors pertaining to lack of understanding the nature of this channel and communication in cyberspace altogether.

Sixth - there are plenty (some estimate over 1,500) of online support groups, most of them moderated/managed by professionals or paraprofessionals. Most of these groups are conducted through open forums. Based on my personal impression, some of these groups are excellent resource for people in emotional distress, but many just miss this purpose, primarily due to lack of basic knowledge and undestanding of what online groups mean and how to get the most of them.

Posted by Dror Green at the ISMHO Discussion Forum, May 24, 2005

I was the first, or one of the first online therapists in Israel. I heard about two or three Israeli therapists that experience with online therapy. I started my virtual clinic in 1999, and since than I have developed a forum which functions as an online clinic. Now I am finishing writing my PhD thesis on the adaptation of therapeutic ground rules in online psychotherapy.

I can say that online therapy is not popular in Israel, and most of the therapists are against it, when they hear about it. Naturally, in 1999, I had to learn about online therapy from my own experience (and from some online sources), and now I use my forums for teaching and supervising other therapists.

As Azy wrote, there are no guidelines or laws refer to online therapy. This is ovbious, since online therapy is still taking its first steps. The situation in Israel is more frustrating, considering that the law refer only to clinical psychologists (while clinical psychologists can do psychotherapy, other psychologists, like educational psychologists, are not allowed to do therapy. On the other hand, the guild of psychologists stops all efforts of legislation concerning psychotherapy, and anyone, who is not a psychologist, can do psychotherapy).

Althoug online therapy is not popular in Israel (most of my online clients are Israelis who live abroad and want and Israeli therapists), there are many psychotherapists and clinical psychologists who run online support groups. I started an open support group (forum) for PTSD victims in 2000, which I am still running, and I am also running a professional support gruop for PTSD victims in a secure forum for a limited group. In the last three years we have a secure forum for peer supervision for therapists who run 'psychological' forums. There are about 40 participants in this forum, and we had two annual conferences in Tel Aviv university and a two day conference in my site (120 therapists participated). Lately the subject of online suppurt groups and online therapy became more familiar in Israel. I published a thriller about online therapy, and the professional periodicals published some papers by my friends and by myself in 2005.

Since online psychotherapy is still young and fragile, I believe that we have to break out of our homeland territores and cooperate, in order to improve our practice, define our code of ethics and learn from each other.

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