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As a dietitian at Yale-New Haven Hospital, Ilisa Nussbaum worked on the front lines of the pandemic in the spring of 2020. One of her responsibilities was to make sure patients on ventilators with COVID-19 got their nutritional needs met. She quickly realized she needed psychological support to help her get through this tough time.
“I became paralyzed by fear over things that should be relatively nonfrightening, like walking by a railing at work that overlooked an atrium,” she recalls. But all the local therapists she contacted were so busy they weren’t taking on new clients.
One evening while scrolling through Facebook, Nussbaum saw an ad for a mental health app. It was a talk therapy chatbot that helps users monitor their mood. “A little robot asked me questions and sent me articles and videos on how to cope with my feelings during the pandemic,” she says. “I found it very useful, especially when I felt overwhelmed and helpless.”
Research shows that the app she tried can indeed be effective. When young adults aged 18-28 used it daily for 2 weeks, they experienced more than a 20% reduction in depression symptoms compared with a control group, according to a 2017 study in JMIR Mental Health.
As the COVID-19 pandemic persists, stories like Nussbaum’s are becoming more common. An October 2021 study in the Lancet found that almost a third of U.S. adults had symptoms of depression in 2021, compared with 27.8% of adults in the early months of the pandemic in 2020 and 8.5% before the pandemic. As a result, online therapy platforms that connect users to a mental health professional with the click of a button, as well as mental health apps, are in high demand.
The Pros and Cons
With anxiety and depression skyrocketing, and in-person therapists in short supply, there are many reasons people may find it appealing to air their woes to a therapist from the comfort of their own couch.
“Online platforms offer easy entrée, and they’re often more affordable than traditional therapy,” says Lynn Bufka, PhD, senior director of practice transformation and quality at the American Psychological Association.
Research supports online therapy, too. A 2018 analysis of 20 studies compared the effectiveness of online and face-to-face cognitive behavior therapy. This type of therapy helps patients change their negative thoughts and feelings. The study concluded that online cognitive therapy was just as effective as the in-person version for treating anxiety and depression.
There may be even more value in online therapy during the COVID-19 pandemic because you don’t have to take precautions such as wearing a mask during sessions, says Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, director of research and innovation at the Mindfulness Center at the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, RI.
“You can see one another face-to-face, which is really important for therapists since 70-80% of all communication happens nonverbally,” he says.