Telehealth and Ethics: An Overview

Course overview

Course Description: This course is based upon materials published in open-access journals. It contains 3 separate articles to provide the clinician with an overview of ethics and telehealth delivery from multiple perspectives. The provision of psychotherapy over distance using technology is a growing market reaching many patients, and therefore the risks and benefits need to be known by all psychotherapists whether they themselves practice online or not. The first article is a comprehensive review of the main ethical arguments for and against different forms of online psychotherapy and aims to enhance discussion of ethical issues in this growing area. The findings may help practitioners decide whether to engage in online psychotherapy, inform patients about risks and benefits, improve ethical guidelines, and stimulate further ethical discussion. The findings are argumentative and qualitative in nature, and further quantitative research is needed. The second article focuses on the impact of telemental healthcare provision and its implications on the client-clinician therapeutic relationship from ethical, practical, and legal perspectives. Since the American Psychological Associations Guidelines for the Practice of Telepsychology were published in 2013, new online services for telemental healthcare delivery have launched. The use of these services and how they may be used to enhance patient experience and patient outcomes as well as facilitate technology adoption by clinicians will be reviewed. The third article discusses social distancing measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic that have accelerated the adoption and implementation of digital mental health tools. Psychiatry and therapy sessions are being conducted via videoconferencing platforms, and the use of digital mental health tools for monitoring and treatment has grown. This rapid shift to telehealth during the pandemic has given added urgency to the ethical challenges presented by digital mental health tools. Regulatory standards have been relaxed to allow this shift to socially distanced mental health care. It is imperative to ensure that the implementation of digital mental health tools, especially in the context of this crisis, is guided by ethical principles and abides by professional codes of conduct. This paper examines key areas for an ethical path forward in this digital mental health revolution: privacy and data protection, safety and accountability, and access and fairness. This course on ethical issues in telehealth therapy is designed for marriage and family therapist, social workers, professional counselors, psychologists, nurses, and substance abuse counselors who do clinical work. In addition, this course is appropriate for intermediate and advanced level practitioners who wish to develop their knowledge of ethical issues in telehealth. The course material includes a literature review of publications on online psychotherapy methods. It may also be useful for licensed clinicians who require continuing clinical education courses for license renewal. The course is based on journal articles that include structured literature reviews. The benefit of reading a structured literature review is that it provides the practitioner with information from a broad base of peer-reviewed articles. Authors: Stoll, Muller and Trachsel; Whaley; Martinez-Martin, Dasgupta, Carter, Chandler, Kellmeyer, Kreitman, Weiss, and Cabrera Learning Objectives: This course will provide the practitioner with detailed information regarding telehealth and ethics. Specifically, a professional will: Describe the top ethical arguments for and against engagement in online psychotherapy. Describe recommendations for practice that address potential problems with online psychotherapy. Identify ethical considerations related to delivering mental healthcare remotely using telecommunications Identify ethical principles related to privacy and data protection in the context of digital