A little less magical, but much more convenient: a qualitative study of patients’ experiences with teletherapy compared to in-person psychotherapy

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Despite the increasing number of reports on patients’ experiences of the transition to teletherapy due to the pandemic, patients’ later perceptions, once teletherapy became common practice, remain relatively unexamined. We interviewed 26 psychotherapy patients about their experiences, approximately one and a half years into the pandemic, regarding the transition to teletherapy, differences from in-person therapy, suggestions for optimizing its use, and future plans. Thematic analysis identified six themes: 1) Transition was complicated by socio-political and health emergency factors, 2) Teletherapy is convenient and allows more human-to-human contact, 3) Teletherapy lost its magic and feels less safe, 4) Advice to therapists: Speak more and get comfortable with technology, 5) Advice to fellow patients: Be prepared, this is different, and 6) Future plans: To each their own, we can be flexible. Overall, themes reflected increased convenience and flexibility in teletherapy, greater ease in opening up, but also technical challenges and various losses: routines surrounding in-person treatment, a therapeutic space, the “magic”, a sense of emotional holding. Overall, these results suggest variability in patients’ subjective experiences with teletherapy; further research on patient characteristics that might impact their experiences is needed to better understand for whom teletherapy would work best.