Advantages and limitations of network consultation
This article is from: Xinmen Community Reprinted, please indicate that it is from www.xindoor.com. Author: Mix.
The so-called network psychological consultation refers to the process of helping visitors solve their psychological problems in an appropriate way by using various psychological theories and methods with the network as the medium. At present, online consultation services mainly include e-mail of individuals or groups on the Internet, bulletin board system (BBS) and instant text conversation.
Just as the influence of the Internet on modern society is mixed, and the Internet is vividly called a "double-edged sword", as a new form of psychological consultation, online psychological consultation has both irreplaceable advantages and obvious weaknesses and limitations of traditional psychological consultation (mainly including outpatient consultation, letter consultation and telephone consultation).
First, the advantages of online psychological counseling
1, which is convenient for the confidentiality of the parties.
In real life, there is a big obstacle in psychological counseling, that is, the counselor's doubt about confidentiality, but there is no such problem in online counseling. When surfing the internet, the client logs in as a virtual identity, which can hide your real name, appearance, voice and other personal privacy, even the gender is unknown to others. In this case, even if your personal information is published on BBS, others can't sit in the right place and guess your true identity.
2. Equal and relaxed consultation and visiting relationship.
In traditional psychological counseling, the relationship between the counselor and the visitor is a vertical interpersonal relationship similar to that between superiors and subordinates, teachers and students. In virtual communication, avoiding face-to-face pressure and embarrassment will make the clients not have to worry about social evaluation, eliminate all kinds of concerns, open their hearts and state their psychological confusion and needs as truly as possible, thus helping psychological counselors to understand the real psychological situation of the clients more comprehensively and take appropriate measures to solve their problems.
3. Increased freedom of choice.
Different from traditional psychological counseling, online counseling is not limited by objective conditions such as traffic, which frees people from the constraints of time and space. Visitors can come and go freely and move freely. They can consult at any time according to their own needs. They can choose to consult further or stop consulting according to whether they meet their own requirements. They are free to choose their favorite consultants and log in again with a new identity.
4. Rich in information
The psychological crux of some visitors is due to inexperience and information occlusion, which often requires the psychotherapist to have rich experience and a lot of information. But in real life, everyone's experience and energy are limited, and surfing the Internet can solve this contradiction well. Online communication can reach all kinds of people, and the breadth and richness of contact are incomparable in real life. The client can communicate with them to do psychological counseling indirectly, which gives the individual great initiative and is of great benefit to problem solving and psychological growth.
5, convenient and fast
The convenient and fast characteristics of the network also make online psychological counseling popular. No matter where visitors are, as long as they have a computer with Internet access, they can seek the help of psychologists or many netizens to solve their psychological confusion in time and avoid leaving an introduction of mental illness. Consultants can also reply online at any time, regardless of time and place.
6, easy to think and analyze
Visitors and consultants need to write when communicating by email or forum. Writing itself is also a process of sorting out ideas and self-reflection. Unlike face-to-face inquiry and telephone consultation, you don't need to know each other's intentions and react immediately, but you can have relatively easy time to think and analyze carefully, thus enhancing the accuracy of grasping the problem.
7, easy to store and query cases
In traditional psychological consultation, the preservation and inquiry of cases is a trivial matter, which is quite time-consuming and laborious, but it is easy to realize online consultation with the help of modern technical means. Therefore, firstly, it greatly improves the work efficiency of consultants in supervision and research, and also provides consultants with a broader choice space. Inquirers can find relevant content from major search engines or according to the column settings of web pages. If you are interested, you can look at the available cases first and see if there is anything you want. If you still don't understand, you must ask yourself further.
In addition, online consultation is also an economical and time-saving consultation method. At present, most online consultations in China are free, and instant toll collectors are cheaper than face-to-face consultations. Network consultation also saves people the trouble of taking transportation. Especially in crowded cities, this is more attractive.
Second, the weaknesses and limitations of online psychological counseling
1, whether the question is true or not.
The anonymity of the internet makes people dare to express themselves more truly, without worrying about social evaluation, which can avoid the worry and embarrassment in face-to-face communication, but it also brings about the lack of sense of responsibility-visitors can show their inner privacy and darkness without scruple, and some even make up exaggerated and bizarre stories to fill their inner emptiness. In line with the professional standards of safeguarding the interests of customers and serving customers, consultants should trust and respect visitors, but they can't help smiling bitterly: the other party is fake, but I want to be sincere.
2. Incomplete information
Network consultation is an indirect interpersonal interaction. You can't hear each other's voice, you can't see each other's eyes, expressions and gestures, and a lot of valuable information in the communication between the two sides is missing. It is sometimes difficult to achieve the same effect as language expression only through words. In face-to-face communication, psychological counselors will make comprehensive analysis and inference based on the dialogue and expression of visitors, and make appropriate responses in time. Especially when verbal signals and nonverbal signals are inconsistent, experienced consultants will believe and attach more importance to the meaning represented by nonverbal signals. However, in online consultation, if the visitor or consultant's writing ability is not strong, it will greatly affect the consultation process and effect.
3. The relationship between consultation and interview is unstable for a long time.
The elimination of psychological barriers can not be immediate, and the medicine can get rid of the disease. Therefore, most contemporary psychologists and clinical workers emphasize the establishment of a trust-seeking relationship, which requires a period of joint discussion between the two sides to clarify the problems and achieve satisfactory treatment results. In online consultation, some people surf the Internet for recreation, or regard surfing the Internet as a way of leisure and entertainment, and their behavior is tentative and random. Some people disappear after only one visit, while others reappear after a long time. Although some people hope to solve their psychological confusion through online counseling, it is a great pity that their resistance or hesitation can't be detected by the counselor in time and give effective feedback, or the confrontation of the counselor makes them feel uncomfortable (and confrontation is often a necessary condition for effective counseling). Just when the problem is about to be clarified, it is a great pity that they fled.
4. Subject to objective factors such as technical level, network environment and website management.
Network psychological consultation requires visitors and psychological counselors to have convenient internet access conditions, certain network knowledge and computer level, normal network operation and fast transmission speed. A server failure occurred in a psychological website in China, which caused a large number of emails to stay and the counselor's reply could not be sent.
At present, most online psychological services in China are free, which is of course a good thing for netizens, but websites have to pay for office space, equipment and consultants' work. The basic principle of business is to pursue profits, and providing free lunch is just a means of operation. If the service does not get the expected return (such as attracting advertisements), or the website has limited financial resources, it will inevitably affect the development of online consultation.
To sum up, psychological counseling is a highly professional job. Although online consultation has advantages that other consultation methods do not have, its weaknesses and limitations are also very obvious. The communication between psychological counselors and psychologists through the internet is indirect and stays at a shallow level, which is far less direct, specific, intimate, in-depth and operability than face-to-face consultation. Even if the network technology is greatly improved in the future and instant audio-visual is applied to online consultation, people can use multimedia to interact online, and online psychological consultation can't replace long-term and systematic face-to-face consultation outside the network.
At the same time, we should also see that the internet has penetrated into all aspects of social life, and it has become an irresistible trend to use the internet to carry out psychological counseling. Because of its convenience, safety, economy, time-saving and freedom, online consultation will develop with the development of network technology and the further popularization and acceleration of the network, and will be gradually accepted by more and more people, and become an important force to promote the growth and expansion of psychological counseling behavior, promote the mental health of Chinese people and ensure social harmony and stability. Of course, at the same time, it also needs technical and legal support, so that individuals who receive psychological services and websites that provide psychological services can get more benefits from it.