Archive for the ‘Online Supervision’ Category

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We are working hard on putting together our new OTI magazine, TILT (Therapeutic Innovations in Light of Technology).

The magazine will be online and free, and launched in September 2010. It will be a blend of news, innovations, member profiles, articles, features, marketing toolboxes, news on textbooks, and advertisements of interest. We will have more news on this very soon as the first issue comes together.

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Each issue will include the following:

· Editors introduction and contents (Kate Anthony & DeeAnna Merz Nagel)
· News from the cyberstreet (tweets members, what is at OTI blog, new research news)
· New Breakthroughs column
· Online Therapist column (A Day In The Life)
· Online Supervisor column
· Ethical Dilemmas column
· Feature article 4000-6000 words
· Other article(s) – about 1500 words
· Marketing toolbox column
· Featured Verified website
· Letters/reader comments
· Book descriptions of 3 books per issue
· Advertising and conferences

If you have an article of up to 1500 words that you are burning to get out of your system on any topic related to innovative delivery of therapeutic services via technology (including coaching), please do submit it no earlier than August 1st and no later than August 20th to editor@onlinetherapymagazine.com

We’re very excited at this new development at the Online Therapy Institute and will let you know even more about the content soon!

We look forward to reading your article!

If you have other inquiries about the magazine including advertising options please email info@onlinetherapyinstitute.com

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Get Verified!

Do you have a website that offers information, services or products related to mental health?

Online Therapy Institute verifies websites so that individuals and businesses can demonstrate to their audience that their website is in compliance with what OTI considers to be “best practice” and in accordance with OTI’s Ethical Frameworks.

Getting OTI Verified means whether you offer website development and marketing services, you are an individual practitioner in private practice or you own an e-clinic or you represent a charity or educational organization you can indicate to the public that you understand the ethical implications of delivering mental health information and services online.

Website Categories

• Client Services (therapy, counselling. counseling, coaching)
• Therapist/Coach Directory
• Social Network
• Blog
• Peer Support
• Self Help
• Practice Building/Marketing
• Supervision/Consultation
• Education/Professional Development
• Crisis Intervention

You may have a website that fits into more than one category. Or you may have two websites under the same business name. For instance, some people have a private practice website and a separate blog site. We will offer an OTI Verified Seal that you can use on all of your sites. By implementing the items on our checklist that apply to your website categories, you can Get Verified .

• Your seal will be a choice of two styles.
• Each seal carries your company name and the current date.
• The seal cannot be replicated onto another site.
• The cost is $99.99 for the first year and $49.99 renewal each year following.

Instructions

You must have Adobe Reader to Download the following files

OTI Get Verified Checklist ….. OTI Get Verified Notes

• Compare your website to our checklist to be sure your website is ready for verification.
• Read through the notes that offer clarification for items on the checklist.
• Once you are sure you meet the criteria, click Google Buy Now button below.
• Following the completion of the payment process, you will be directed to the application.
• You will be contacted within 10 business days with your OTI Verified Seal.
• Should your website not meet the OTI Verified criteria, we will make recommendations.

Get Verified!

The Online Counselling and Therapy in Action (OCTIA – see www.octia.org.uk) conference (now in its second year), took place in Manchester, England  and online this March 2010  through chat rooms, live video and my own presentation taking place in Second Life with its own chat.

The photograph below shows me presenting to the room of delegates at the OCTIA conference venue, with my own laptop in front of me.  Behind me on the screen is the view from my laptop perspective into Second Life, where I was joined by colleagues from all over the world represented as avatars, who had their own chat facility with me via my laptop and the delegates in the room who were also in Second Life as avatars (hence the laptops in the audience).  The screen on the wall to my right is where I was shown live from the perspective of one of the other delegates in the room in Second Life, with the official OCTIA chatroom being scrolled to the right of the video, where I was also taking part via audio and my laptop via text.

If that description sounds confusing, the point is that I was present in five different realities simultaneously, presenting worldwide.  This groundbreaking event reached four continents – Europe, the USA/Canada, South America and Australia – bringing them together to discuss the use of virtual and mixed realities in counselling and psychotherapy experientially.  To ensure the delegates watching in the physical room and online were truly able to understand what working in mixed realities is like, I wore the same clothes that my avatar is based upon, clearer in the photograph below (with my virtual self centre-front of the screen (from my perspective, hence the back view)).

You can also view a video by John Wilson of OnlinEvents and pics of the event. Jokay, founder of Jokaydia where our OTI office and conference center is located,  took some great pics while inworld. We are ever so grateful for her design expertise and professional support.

The Islands of jokaydia is a virtual worlds community of practice facilitated by Jo Kay aka jokay Wollongong. We are exploring the use of virtual worlds and games for education, arts and social change. You can find us in Second Life, Reaction Grid and our new virtual worlds presence – the jokaydia Grid!

We hope you will visit us inworld! If you’d like to check out Online Therapy Square, and the OTI Headquarters visit: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20II/110/68/24.

The Online Therapy Institute is delighted to offer our new course on Online Supervision – text-based strategies. Please check . http://www.onlinetherapyinstitute.com/introduction-to-supervision/ to register for this 5 hour course.

During this course, you will learn about how the supervisory relationship works online, and the importance of secure communication between supervisor and supervisee. We will cover the use of technology historically in supervision to give you grounding in what is available to you for use in practice and to illustrate the usefulness of verbatim transcripts in particular. We will consider the ethical nuances of online supervision, the importance of contract formation, and also some of the boundary issues when being an available online supervisor in practice, particularly with regard to social networking functions of the Internet. Lessons include:

Traditional Uses of Technology
Suitability of the Supervisor
Written Communication Skills for Supervision
Ethical Considerations for the Use of Technology in Supervision
Individual and Group Case Examples
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will be knowledgeable about traditional uses of technology in supervision.

Participants will be able to apply written skills to text-based supervision via chat and email.

Participants will be informed about the ethical considerations for the use of technology in supervision .

I will be traveling to the Phoenix area soon to facilitate another Distance Credentialed Counselor training.  The dates for this training are Feb 25 and Feb 26. I will be teaching the course at Rio Salado College in Tempe and would love to see you there!

The following week I will be in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Spring months take me to Florida, North Carolina, New Jersey, Illinois and Georgia.

SAMPLING OF THE 20 COMPETENCIES COVERED:

• Determine Counselor Suitability to Distance Counseling
• Determine Client Suitability to Distance Counseling
• Learn Security and Confidentiality Strategies
• Create Individual Treatment Plans
• Discuss Ethical and Legal Issues
• Develop an Action Plan to Implement Distance Counseling in Various Work Settings
• Learn about Online Culture
• Handle Crises with Distance Counseling Clients

For full workshop details go to ReadyMinds at http://www.readyminds.com/training/dcc_event.asp.

You can also download a flyer. DCC Arizona

My full training schedule is available at http://www.deeannamerznagel.com/id5.html.

Hope to see you on my travels!

DeeAnna

OTI has been remiss in offering regular blog posts these past couple of months but with good cause and great outcomes!

So what’s in store for 2010? Our authored book, Therapy Online: A Practical Guide was just released and we have another edited book, The Use of Technology in Mental Health: Applications, Ethics and Practice due out this summer. This book has 30 chapters with a total of 47 contributing authors from across the globe.

As promised, we are offering online training about online therapy. We have launched the first 6 workshops with more to come. Each workshop is the equivalent of 5 clock hours of instruction. The workshops are online and self-paced.  The cost per workshop is $119.00/70.00 £.

• Introduction to Cyberspace: A Primer for Helping Professionals
• Relationships in Cyberspace: An Introduction for Helping Professionals
• The Online Therapeutic Relationship: Theoretical Considerations
• Ethical Considerations of Online Therapy
• Working Therapeutically Using Asynchronous Email
• Working Therapeutically Using Synchronous Chat

The workshop details can be accessed at our training portal. We have partnered with DigitalChalk to bring you a user-friendly yet state-of-the-art experience. Continuing Education credits for U.S. psychologists, social workers and counselors will be available very soon.

www.onlinetherapyinstitute.digitalchalk.com.

Just create an account and peruse our catalog! Your account will remain active should you decide to return to take a course.

We are giving our website a facelift so resources are easier to navigate.

We will soon offer an Online Therapy Institute ~verified~ seal that will provide a way for online helping professionals to indicate to the public that their site meets standards of best practice.

We will be facilitating groups and workshops as well as co-sponsoring conferences online and at our Second Life location.

We are collaborating with others to add to our Ethical Framework resources.

We have created:

• Ethical Framework for the Use of Technology in Mental Health
• Ethical Framework for the Use of Technology for Career and School Guidance

Coming Soon:

• Ethical Framework for the Use of Technology in Professional Coaching
• Ethical Framework for the Use of Technology in Crisis, Disaster and Critical Incident Interventions
  

We are offering a directory listing to everyone who joins our social network at www.onlinetherapysocialnetwork.com and your listing will be posted at www.onlinetherapydirectory.net.

For OTI members who practice online, a website listing in the OTI Web Directory (online counseling category) will be added provided the following standards are met:

1. Offer encrypted services for email, chat and web conferencing.
2. List level of education, schools attended and dates graduated.
3. List certifications and licenses if applicable with verification web links.
4. List crisis information or a link on the website’s home page.
5. List therapist’s alternate contact information in addition to email.

Mostly, we will continue to encourage dialogue among our members and friends at Online Therapy Institute so that we can all learn and grow together!

Kate and DeeAnna

Authored by DeeAnna Nagel, Stephen Goss and Kate Anthony, a new chapter called “The Use of Technology in Supervision” has just been published under the section heading “Emerging and Specialist Issues” in “The Clinical Practice of Supervision”, edited by Pelling, Barletta and Armstrong, published by Australian Academic Press (2009).

You can buy the book here: http://www.australianacademicpress.com.au/Publications/Books/4-921513312.html

In the chapter, we discuss

Technology Assisted Supervision
Enhancing the Use of Video and Audio through Analytical and Research Software
Extending Direct Observation
Delivery via phone, email, listserv, chat, videoconferencing and virtual worlds
Review of the Current Standards for issues such as contracting, informed consent, legalities, confidentiality and encryption, the use (and abuse) of verbatim material
Issues of transference and countertransference
The Suitability of the Supervisor regarding technical competency, training and education

The chapter concludes with questions and activities and has an OTI hand-picked selection of resources and references.

A worthy addition to any online therapy library, and wwe hope you enjoy it!

Kate

Avatar Therapy is not new. The term has been discussed theoretically for nearly ten years. But now that virtualworlds have reached the mainstream and with the advent of gaming, many people understand the provocative power that exists with an avatar identity. People now live part of their lives virtually, sometimes existing in a mixed reality. Since technology and the internet have become such a part of our social fabric, separating time “online” from real world time is sometimes difficult and the lines have become blurred. Beyond standard email, people now chat and instant message, join social networks such as Facebook and MySpace and network professionally on sites such as Linkedin. People engage in consultation, business transactions, coaching and psychotherapy online via email, chat, audio and videoconferencing. The idea of engaging in therapy online within a virtual world environment is now reality. Second Life, a virtual world platform that is free to join already hosts private practitioners and mental health agencies offering psycho-education, consumer information and psychotherapy.

Three-dimensional virtual world settings offer another level of sensory experience that could enhance the therapeutic process. People can create an avatar that is a literal or metaphorical representation of self. Avatars can also represent a part of the self- perhaps the inner child or the shadow. With advances in technology and artificial intelligence, the ability to simulate various scenarios with therapy clients is not far off. Artificial intelligent avatars can be used in the therapeutic process to help a client heal from trauma, create a new ending to a dilemma, or work out unfinished business with a deceased loved one. These are but a few examples of how avatar therapy, with the aid of artificial intelligence and facilitation from a trained avatar psychotherapist can benefit people.

Properly trained avatar therapists would have a clear understanding of more traditional approaches to therapy online such as those mentioned above and understand the ethical issues related to online therapy and the delivery of mental health services through technological means. In addition, avatar therapists would have adequate knowledge of the online disinhibition effect as well as trauma related theories so that clients could be adequately prepared for avatar work. Avatar therapists would need to understand the importance of titrating emotions and properly grounding the client using containment techniques. Keeping the client emotionally safe would be paramount in a virtual environment because issues that would typically surface over several months or years could potentially surface much quicker in virtual world setting.

Avatar therapy of the future moves far beyond the therapist and client’s avatar representations engaging in an online form of traditional talk therapy. This futuristic and innovative therapy combines artificial intelligence with elements of traditional psychotherapeutic techniques used in grief work, and with trauma survivors as examples. Training therapists for this futuristic work can begin now in counseling education programs across the globe as we prepare practitioners to incorporate technology into the art of psychotherapy.

~ DeeAnna

This conference was held at Leicester University on April 25, 2009 and was attended by approximately 35 delegates, with a further 40 online delegates who attended at various points remotely via a live feed, including both video stream from the face-to-face conference and remote chatroom debate concurrently.

The event was opened by Gill Jones of ACTO and Counselling Online Ltd – co-hosts of the conference.  An exciting and evolving programme emerged throughout the day, starting with a keynote from Jeannie Wright of New Zealand giving a remote presentation (pre-recorded) on “Only Connect”, covering some of the research linking expressive and reflective writing with online therapies.  A representative of BACP brought along copies of the Guidelines for purchase (see http://www.bacp.co.uk/publications/NEW%20PUBLICATIONS/onlinecounselling.php).

A change of programme meant that Dr. Stephen Goss, co-author of the recently published 3^rd Edition of the BACP Guidelines for Online Counselling and Psychotherapy, including Guidelines for Online Supervision (Anthony & Goss, 2009), stepped in at the last minute to explain the contents of the publication and the implications for the profession from a wider perspective regarding international ethical development of the field.

Due to further programme changes, the day evolved to include three workshops to run simultaneously – Anne Stokes on Online Supervision, Jane Evans on working online in HE and FE, and Gill Webb hosting a live online chat taster session.

Keynote speakers included Steph Palin covering the work of Relate with a live demonstration of how their chatroom support helps – a neat amalgamation of chat and website links within the same client screen.  Joe Ferns talked delegates through the work of the Samaritans online, with some stunning statistics and illustration of the exchanges the organisation receives through mobile texting.

The keynote in the latter part of the afternoon hosted a video interview with Audrey Jung (Pres-Elect of ISMHO) by Kate Anthony (Past-President of ISMHO) as interviewer about the state of play in the US, before going live to New Jersey to chat with DeeAnna Merz Nagel (also Past-President of ISMHO) as commentator on the interview and to answer delegate questions.

The panel of speakers, led by Anne Stokes, then answered questions from the floor for 50 minutes.

Although this was a small conference on a specialist subject, it is a great step forward for the profession in linking with people all over the world in not only observing the face-to-face presentations but also contributing from the OCTIA chatroom.  The chatroom, facilitated by the organisers, Kate Anthony and Stephen Goss – was projected onto the side wall of the conference suite so that the live chat and questions to the presenters emanating from it could be fed to the keynote speakers.  Furthermore, the conference will, with the help of OnlineEvents.co.uk, be available for download from the OCTIA website – including the pre-conference interviews with Gill Jones, Kate Anthony, and DeeAnna Merz Nagel – watch http://www.octia.org.uk.

Kate Anthony, MSc, FBACP