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Online counseling is the provision of professional mental health counseling services through the Internet. Services are typically offered via email, real-time chat, and video conferencing.〔 Some clients use online counseling in conjunction with traditional psychotherapy, or nutritional counseling, and a growing number of clients are using online counseling as a replacement for office visits. While some form of tele-psychology has been available for over 35 years, the advent of internet video chat systems and the increasing penetration of broadband has resulted in a growing movement towards online therapy. Clients are using videoconferencing, live chat and email with professional psychologists in place of or in addition to face-to-face meetings.〔 == History == Since the beginning of the internet in 1972 several creative people perceived the potential of the internet for the therapeutic communication. At the time the internet went public, this launch went hand in hand with the development of the first self-help groups on the internet who were, in that time, very popular. In 1995, Martha Ainsworth had a couple of psychological complaints where she wanted to get rid off it, so she began searching for a competent therapist. Because of the fact that her travel requirements formed a difficulty to consult a face-to-face therapist she went searching for an effective alternative online. The result was that she found merely a dozen webpages who offered online treatment for psychological complaints. Afterwards Martha Ainsworth wanted to reach the general public with her experiences and founded a sort of clearinghouse for mental health websites, named Metanoia. This database seemed to be a very efficient store-room, as by the year 2000 this clearinghouse contained over 250 websites of private practices, and more than 700 online clinics at a therapist could be contacted. Back in the eighties the first service that launched online mental healthcare into our lives was “Ask Uncle Ezra”. This service was initially meant for students of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The services' name, “Ask Uncle Ezra”, was chosen by Jerry Feist, the founder of the Director of Psychological Services. He worked together with Steve Worona and their service stayed operative until today. The real break-through of online mental healthcare took place in mid-1995, when several free-based public services for mental healthcare appeared, all with the common purpose to provide mental health advice. The founder of these public mental health services was Leonard Holmes, who developed “Shareware Psychological Consultation”. After 1995 David Sommers gave the world of online treatment a whole new dimension: he can be perceived as the pioneer of e-therapy. The core concept of his kind of treatment was the purpose to treat his clients only via the internet in an ongoing helping relationship. Also worth mentioning are the so-called “Samaritans”, a group of trained volunteer crisis counselors, who have done pioneering work with suicidal persons. Between 1994 and 2002 they received an enormous number of e-mails, which they responded to in an anonymous way and without charge. In the area of online counseling, their work can be seen as extremely valuable, because they saved hundreds of despairing and suicidal persons. () It can be assumed that in the near future clients will choose more and more for a psychological treatment that is given via the internet, or at least that they will combine traditional face-to-face therapy with another form of online mental health care. This will also probably be the case for those who exercise a mental health profession: some will prefer to work in a traditional context, whereas others will be more likely to interact with their clients via the internet. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「online counseling」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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