Digital Boundaries: A Review of Clinical and Ethical Issues in Telepsychology among Mental Health Professionals

Abstract

With the COVID-19 epidemic starting in early 2020, the unintentional mass migration to online therapy has drastically changed the landscape. Because of this, mental health professionals need to be conscious of the fact that their traditional ethical obligations still hold even while using technology to offer a service. This scoping study examined the applicability of telepsychology among mental health practitioners as well as its ethical and clinical concerns. There is general agreement in this study that providing mental health treatments to clients via telepsychology is a realistic and practical option both before and after the epidemic. There was a clear pattern that the most prevalent clinical concerns were restricted nonverbal communication between the therapist and the client, communication difficulties in the therapeutic relationship, unsuitable to some mental health disorders, and clinician exhaustion. On the other side, privacy, and secrecy, insufficient telepsychology training and instruction, boundary-related concerns, insufficient telepsychology rules, and handling emergencies were significant ethical issues. These findings open the door to telepsychology, a workable method of providing mental health and psychosocial treatments that aim to reach clients across geographic boundaries and continue the transformative job of fostering change, healing, and growth among clients. Understanding these problems makes it easier for mental health practitioners to respond to future public health emergencies and other natural catastrophes

Keywords

• assessment
• confidentiality
• online therapy