Kate Anthony

OTI Europe Ltd | Consultancy, Personal Training and Research for Online Therapeutic Services

   
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#wmhd15 – How Post-War Countries are Meeting MH Challenges

October 10, 2015 by Kate Anthony

We all get used to our own government’s attitudes to poor mental health, and with apologies for a fairly sweeping statement, those attitudes generally fall short of the ideal. A common theme is that if you have a broken leg, you get treatment – but if you have a broken mind, you are sidelined, often feared, and usually facing an uphill struggle to gain the treatment you need.
I blog for World Mental Health Day But what if you live in a country where the concept of mental health and the attention it deserves is so new that finding the route to satisfactory help is something of a mystery to you?

My company, the Online Therapy Institute, is proud to work with a small organisation in Kosovo – and will soon be working with a similar organisation in Albania – in bringing safe mental health assistance to those people living in these post-war countries. Many places in Eastern Europe simply don’t have the infrastructure that countries such as the UK and USA have in place for treating mental health issues – however seemingly broken those infrastructures may be.

But what such countries in Eastern Europe DO have is a strong will to make things better for their young populations, and they also have the Internet. The issues these young populations face are many and diverse, particularly in the years after the war ended and as the countries rebuild.

Foundation Together Kosova is a small non-profit organisation with the cheering slogan “Nuk de Vet!” (You Are Not Alone!). To reach out to their citizens suffering with mental health problems, they run a forum-based website and chat service. They ensure their volunteer mental health professionals are trained to work in the online environment, and are about to hold a second conference day in Pristina (the capital of Kosova) to spread awareness of mental health issues, particularly those faced by young people.

I’m telling you all this because as part of World Mental Health Day, this small charity deserves attention for quietly getting on with mental health assistance in their part of the world. In my often daily interactions with the volunteers as they work through my training programme, I hear their dedication and their commitment to “getting it right” in a country where there are few ground rules for counselling and therapeutic services – let alone online services.

The Internet has transformed mental health services – most counselling and psychotherapy organisations (among those in other helping professions) have an online presence, and we are now very used to Googling our symptoms of distress before we visit our medical practitioner. That a small charity in an often overlooked country is there at the forefront of online mental health – not only to make a difference to the people but also to help shape the mental health services of the future – is something we as a world can be proud of.

Happy Birthday Online Therapy – 20 years old!

September 7, 2015 by Kate Anthony

20

During one of my infrequent bouts of insomnia last night, it occurred to me that in 2015 we ought to be celebrating the 20th birthday of online counselling and therapy.  It now also occurs to me that thinking about such things at 3am is a bit odd, but then those who know me know that the practice and ethics of online work is the thing that keeps me awake at night, so I’ll choose the word passionate rather than odd…

Anyway, as outlined in my 2010 book Online Therapy: A Practical Guide, co-authored with the lovely DeeAnna Nagel (now of Havana Wellness – check it out!), it’s established that the first paid-for online mental health services started appearing in mid-1995, led by pioneers such as Leonard Holmes, John Suler, David Sommers  and of course, John Grohol of PsychCentral.  There’s a timeline here up to 2002 from the old Metanoia.org site, one of the first websites I came across when starting to look into the emerging field in 1998.

20 years old in 2015 – that means the field is almost an adult!  So I am constantly surprised when it is referred to as “new” – it may be young and dashing, but at 20 years old, it’s not exactly new anymore!

In fact, it also now occurs to me that my training programmes first emerged in a face-to-face capacity in 2000, so the sub-field of training for online services is already a teenager (read my recent BJGC paper about that here)! And let’s not forget Supervision and Coaching also taking place online!

So I was pleased to be invited to Switzerland next year to speak at a conference being offered by the University of Basel. The conference theme is “Typing Yourself Healthy…”, and I was reflecting how nice it is to see the original online therapy modality being aired – a part of online therapy which remains robust despite the great technological developments we have seen over the years, particularly with video now being a reliable method of communication with clients (this wasn’t the case back in 1995, trust me!).  Even if you picture “online therapy” as “video therapy”, I’m pretty sure that there is a lot of text-based work involved. And if you have joined the excellent free-to-sign-up platform PlusGuidance, you’ll know that text-based work is very much a part of the communication tools you can use with clients.

So, apart from making me feel very old, what can we take from the history of online therapy? Our 20-year old is maturing, no doubt – BACP will shortly publish new Good Practice Guidance for working with both text and audio/video – the latest set of ethical advice from a professional organisation that first looked at the area back in the late 90’s, and first published guidelines in 2001.  The number of doctoral-level studies in the field has increased since my own was awarded back in 2010, and I see many on the horizon as trainees with the Online Therapy Institute find their own burning research topics as a result of their studies.  The media is less shocked by the concept of using the World Wide Web for mental health support, although they still love a story about it going pear-shaped (and always will, I suspect).  Even using avatars and virtual environments for therapy doesn’t raise too many eyebrows these days.

So join me in lighting a candle for the 20th anniversary of online practice going live! It’s been a thrilling (and sometimes frustrating) journey to adulthood, as the Internet became an everyday part of our lives and more and more clients reached out through their personal devices rather than calling their medical practice.  Having an online element to your practice shouldn’t be intimidating – the pioneers of the field have had your back for ages – so maybe it’s time to reach back out to the clients who are trying to find you online!

OTI Graduate wins BACP New Researcher Award!

April 2, 2015 by Kate Anthony

I’m very pleased to share the great news that our graduate Jeanette Hennigan is the deserving winneJHr of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy’s (BACP) New Researcher Award for her pioneering study “’UK secondary school therapists communication with with their pupils and their future intentions”.

You may have read about Jeanette’s work in the Autumn edition of TILT Magazine, where she shared more about the study with our Associate Editor for Research, Dr Stephen Goss as part of our regular Research Review column.  Her final study will form the backbone of her being awarded her Doctorate in Psychotherapy by Professional Studies with the Metanoia Institute.

Jeanette invested in her continuing professional development in online work by successfully completing our BACP endorsed Certified Cyber Facilitator training. We take great pride in every one of our students at OTI, and so it is with immense pleasure that we see a graduate getting the recognition deserved in wider accolade of such a ground breaking study!

Jeanette’s award presentation will take place at the BACP Research Conference in May in Nottingham at 10am on the Saturday, and you can also take advantage of Dr Stephen Goss being there to find out more about the Metanoia DPsych programme.  Look out for his poster “Developing Counselling as a Practitioner-Researcher: The Experience of Undertaking the “Research Journey” for Mid-Career Practitioners in Counselling and Psychotherapy” and chat with him about how you can take your budding doctoral ideas forward.  He will also be talking about his new book “Making Research Matter”, which features a chapter from me about my own journey on my doctoral award with Metanoia Institute!

Congratulations again Jeanette – we all raise a glass to you!

🙂

Our new Resource Guides!

February 24, 2015 by Kate Anthony

DeeAnna and I took a bit of a leap this week after a brainstorming session!  As we’ve blogged over at Online Therapy Institute, we get a lot of emails from people worldwide who  haven’t got the time right now or the funds to take that all important CPD training, yet do have a burning question they need an answer to as they think about developing their online services.  Or perhaps the idea of offering a blended service of using their traditional skills and newer technological tools is just a faint idea, and they need to have the pertinent information within their grasp in order to make an informed decision about going down that road before committing to it.e learning

So we wanted to do something new to meet those needs!

Those of you who are aware of our work at the Institute know that it is our mission to ensure as many practitioners are armed with what we know about working online before embarking upon doing so with those often vulnerable clients.  One of my prouder moments was a graduate of mine who was able to say to me after investing in training that it was the best money she ever spent, as it told her that she was totally unsuited to the work and was so glad to have found that out beforehand.  This is something we trainers should pay more attention to, I feel – knowing that sometimes when a training doesn’t work out for an individual, it isn’t a failure on our part or theirs – simply that not all tools and methods are suited to everybody.  I remember during my core training being told I should sit with my wrist upwards and exposed as this indicated openness to the client.  I just felt I was offering up my wrists to be slit, and the congruent me quickly abandoned that nugget of expert advice…

So we asked ourselves “how can we reach more people unprepared for using their skills in a digital environment, but who don’t want a full credential or can’t find the time and money to invest in this field as part of their continuing professional development? We can’t give it away – we’re not a charity, a library or a government entity. But we do have a mission that has been burning within us for well over 15 years now to help counsellors and coaches keep skills up to date in light of technological development and the changes in society that the Internet has brought, and TILT Magazine can only go part of the way in doing that.”

(To be honest, the discussion wasn’t as neatly put as that, and I may be paraphrasing somewhat…)

Anyway, what we have come up with is consolidating the knowledge and expertise we offer through our introductory courses into neat little resource guides!  If you choose these, you’ll still be part of our community at our forum and Facebook groups for co-learning with our current and past students – and as an added bonus, if you decide that the time is right for you to take the course itself and be fully mentored by me or DeeAnna as you learn, you can simply upgrade! Woot!  All this for under 50 quid!

🙂

Courses offered as both a credential and a resource guide: 

Certified Cyber Therapist

Certified Cyber Coach

Certified Aroma Coach

Certified Intuitive Practitioner

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