A Case Study of Therapeutic Support Using e-mail

Introduction There is a rapidly developing debate about the possibility of offering counselling by e-mail, both for new relationships and continuing established ones, either in electronic mail consultations (in asynchronous time, where there could be a delay of up to several days between messages) or in on-line consultations (in real time, where each participant waits for a reply). The emergence of a range of Internet therapists offering a wide range of support, from agony-aunt type advice to on-line sessions and group discussions, reveals a growing demand for such services. | work in a busy counselling service in‘an English university and wonder how a university or college counselling service would react to such a demand. Does this constitute something that is worth doing: is it therapeutic? does it offer a valuable service to clients? Many writers have taken on the challenge of considering whether e-mail contact can be considered to be counselling. Lago (1996) drew counsellors’ attention to these issues and raised a number of the questions that others have begun to address, notably ‘Do the existing theories of psychotherapy continue to apply, or do we need a new theory of e-mail therapy?’