A Bibliometrics Analysis of Online-Counselling over Two Decades (2007-2026)

HRMARS - Online counselling has become a popular mode of service delivery for mental health professionals. But, the intellectual structure, authors and thematic evolution patterns in this area remain scattered across disciplines. This fragmentation leads to a difficult situation for the researchers and practitioners to identify the most influential knowledge bases, and the dominant and emerging themes, especially during the COVID-19 era that accelerated digitalization. To fill this gap, this bibliometric study maps the research landscape of online counselling using a Scopus-based dataset and science-mapping techniques. Data for bibliographic records were extracted from Scopus from 2007 to 2026 (n = 494) and analysed using Scopus Analyzer for descriptive performance indicators and VOSviewer for network-based visualization (mappings of co-occurrences and collaborations). The findings show pronounced growth of low output (?16 publications/year) during the pre-2020 periods which rapidly escalates during and post-pandemic (2020: 33; 2021: 63; 2022: 66), followed by a projection of peak year in 2025 (71) and partial year decline (13) in 2026. Through an analysis of co-occurrences among authors and keywords (full counting; minimum occurrences = 5), there was a reduction of 1,346 keywords to 56 and seven clusters were formed. “Teletherapy” (99 occurrences; TLS = 154); “covid-19” (81 occurrences; TLS = 163); “online counselling” (76 occurrences; TLS = 83) were part of the conceptual core of the research. Also, there was a sustained focus on CBT, depression, anxiety, and therapeutic relationship constructs.