Moving Towards Mental Health Chat in Patient-Psychologist Relationships

Talking with a therapist through mental health chat is becoming more common, though for many people the idea is probably still a strange one.

Traditionally, when an individual is seeking to counsel, they must set up an appointment at a therapy office. Sometimes it may not be possible to see a therapist or psychologist for several days or weeks. Some potential clients may not have a close family or friend group, so they have no one else to talk to. For individuals who are really struggling with mental health issues, like feelings of depression or extreme anxiety, waiting for the appointment could be agonizing. They may make poor choices and decisions in the meantime, decisions that could potentially include self-harm.

For all of these reasons and many more, a greater number of psychologists and therapists are moving their services online. Through mental health chat, they are able to provide counseling and therapy to clients at anytime, from anywhere, at a moment’s notice.

From the Therapy Couch to Mental Health Chat

People seek out counseling for a variety of reasons. While some individuals may have a lifelong history of mental illness, others may be going through a particularly traumatic event. They may need help developing coping mechanisms and strategies. Some individuals may be having marital or family problems and want to know how to improve their relationships. Other individuals may wake up every day with crippling depression, making it almost impossible to get through their day.

Regardless of the reason why people seek counseling and therapy, it generally is a very private affair to them. As a psychologist, it is your responsibility to maintain a strict privacy policy and develop a trusting relationship with clients. The goal is for clients to know they can open up to you and generally feel comfortable.

For some, the idea of traveling to a therapist’s office may make them uncomfortable and prevent them from seeking help. However, if you were able to offer in-home counseling services via a chatroom, they may be more interested.

Clients would be able to simply login to the mental health chat, possibly even anonymously, to seek help. After connecting with a therapist or counselor, they would begin developing a relationship with you, hopefully growing more comfortable and open over time. They may want to continue setting up regular meetings and sessions with you, without ever having to leave their home.

Benefits of an At-Home Practice

It may initially seem odd to work from home as a psychologist or therapist. However, around 20% of Americans are working from home in today’s time. There is no reason why the psychology and counseling field cannot also move to a work from home environment.

chat depression solved with mental health chat

As a field that relies heavily on developing relationships with clients and interpersonal communication, it may initially seem impossible to do so without actually sitting in the same room.

However, with today’s advanced chatroom technologies, it would still be possible to hear people’s voices and see their faces as they were speaking. While you may initially start a conversation via normal chat, you could transition to in-chat calling and in-chat video-calling as well to get to know clients better.

Video calls would also allow you to replicate some of the more standard in-office counseling experience. You would be able to see client’s body language and facial expressions to gauge their emotions and feelings. If you working with more than one person, like a couple or family members, you would be able to see how they interacted with one another.

Making the Transition

From the counselor’s point of view, working from home may also provide you with more flexibility. You could truly set your own schedule, spend more time with your family, and be able to work from the comfort and convenience of your own home.

Having an at-home practice may also help you cut back on costs, as you would not have to rent an office space. You could potentially offer counseling services at a reduced rate and make them more accessible to all people.

If you are considering the transition from a traditional counseling and therapy practice to a virtual one, there are several online counseling services that employ psychologists and therapists. Customer service reps work to connect clients to new counselors around the clock. Working with one of these services may be appealing, as it would be a relatively simple transition process.

Another option would be to begin to offer virtual counseling services in addition to standard in-person counseling. Some or your existing clients may be interested in this idea. It would allow them to continue going to counseling from anywhere. They may go on vacation, be out of town for work, or move to a different city. Throughout it all, they would be able to continue talking with the same psychologist.

You may also be able to solicit new clients by offering a non-traditional virtual counseling service. These individuals may have always wondered about counseling, but been too nervous to walk into an actual therapy office. The online option may be the tipping point for them to seek help.

Get your own chat in here.

Posted on August 28, 2017October 3, 2024 by Editor

Chatting on the Big Screen

Looking beyond the big screen for a moment, we’re all familiar with the common and often ubiquitous ways that chat and messaging services are used today. From technical support from our ISP and sales pitches from car dealers to booking assistance from travel agents, more and more businesses and industries are making use of this service daily.

So let’s innovate.

Screen, Screen, Screen

South by Southwest is a ten-day conference/music festival/game expo that lets professionals and consumers see what’s coming soon in entertainment, technology, and more. Over seventy thousand people attend its keynote speeches and panels each year.

The Consumer Electronics Show focuses on the edges of science and technology. With keynote speakers covering topics from healthcare technology to protecting privacy, over one hundred and twenty thousand people attended the conference in 2017. It generated over one hundred million online interactions.

Concerts, music festivals, TED conferences, and political rallies all draw thousands of people to one place, some for days at a time. They demonstrate or discuss, educate or entertain. But what do they all have in common?

They all have a big screen! Truly massive, larger-than-you-may-realize screens help the crowd see who’s speaking or performing. Often times they serve other functions too. Some events attempt to make use of social media as a way to communicate with the crowd and display the messages. But it’s not always effective.

Failures to Communicate

For example, many social media platforms have their own methods of interacting directly with accounts or events. This can cause confusion to those present. There are also delays due to various technical reasons that can prevent time-sensitive questions or messages from reaching the screen in time.

Many conferences now provide various methods of virtual attendance. It allows a person or persons to view the information live from wherever is convenient. Again, media platforms are utilized at times to try and let those virtual attendees participate in events as though physically present. But, again, the method can fall short.

These platforms are open and widely-used. But if they’re ineffective, what’s an alternative? Instead of something broad, think of an enclosed, contained system specific to that event, speaker, or performer. It would need to be a specific type of system, though, to meet the most needs and offer the best options. What do we mean?

Establishing an Uplink

The ideal solution would counter the problems we’ve identified. It would need to be closed so that it could be quick, simple to prevent confusion, and virtual so that it could be accessed remotely. Simple enough on the surface. A few ideas likely spring to mind right away.

Nearly every venue has a local network, often wireless. Utilizing it could allow for a closed, responsive system. It would prevent easy remote access, though.
Likewise, there are web-based teleconference services that exist. Those usually cost quite a bit of money, suffer lags, and also prevent easy access to local users.
An app seems the most obvious solution. But some people are reluctant to download yet another app, and may have storage space to consider if they want to take pictures. Carrier and equipment varieties may impact performance, as well.

big screen chat room example

Traditional solutions won’t work. Quick solutions won’t work. This is a major opportunity event organizers don’t want to overlook. What other options are there?

How RumbleTalk Helps—Chatting on the Big Screen

The Internet. At the very base of all these solutions is the same vital component that makes them function. For over three decades, we’ve accessed that component in one particular way above all others. For most of us, the earliest we remember is Netscape Navigator. Now the vast majority use Chrome.

A browser-based solution would provide excellent versatility. It’s open because it lives on the Internet, so it can be accessed anywhere. It responds via direct access, which limits lag time significantly. Browsers are included on phones, so there’s no extra download. But can a browser work on a big screen, computer, and phone?

RumbleTalk can. Because RumbleTalk is built using HTML5, you can resize it to fit any screen with no loss of quality. That means it looks just as good on that giant screen as it does on your computer or phone, or even your own television.

Chat is becoming ubiquitous as a service, but there are many paths of innovation left. Mass communication at crowded events is just one potential avenue we’re looking forward to walking.

Posted on August 16, 2017June 15, 2021 by Editor

Why Should Healthcare Providers Consider the Health Chat Room?

According to the World Health Organization, mental disorders affect one in four people. This is a startling figure, a fact that healthcare providers are now only waking up to the issue. Is it too late? People who have access to the right tools have their own problems. They are embarrassed of their health issues because of the stigma on mental health. How can healthcare institutions overcome this? We suggest they consider using a health chat room.

The Benefits of a Health Chat Room

A number of mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression, are fairly common. To tackle such a widespread issue, we need to think of different and innovative options about how we can treat mental health. While technology is vastly improving each day, why don’t we try to use that tool at our disposal?

As more and more people turn to the web for their problems, even the most humane ones, a health chat room is our suggested tool for healthcare providers.

Why A Health Chat Room?

As the number of mental health diagnoses increase, many healthcare providers already have a lot on their hands. Chats are now seen and used by almost everyone worldwide. With a chat, you can communicate from anywhere in the world and get a proper diagnosis for your problem without the embarrassment of going to a mental health hospital or clinic. The widespread use of group chats to treat and support such diagnoses could revolutionize therapy and change lives.

Even the best healthcare professional in the world cannot support their clients 24/7. By adding a health chat room to their site, healthcare providers ensure that their clients always have somewhere to turn. Wherever and whenever, users can enter a safe space that offers comfort and warmth, and talk to a real person in real time. The reassurance and support such an environment fosters can have an immense impact on client well-being.

Benefits of Chats

Groups chats are versatile. Members can talk to everyone simultaneously or privately. As an administrator, a user can initiate a video call or an audio call with the other user. In doing so, the administrator gains a much better understanding of their client. By seeing and hearing the user on the other side, the administrator can see previous aspects he/she could not see in text. This could be aspects such as the tone of their voice, the changing expressions on their face, and even their mannerisms. Knowing more about their clients empowers healthcare providers to do their best work.

Another functionality of a health chat room is sharing files, images, or videos. Users can share images and embed files in a chat room. By using this, healthcare providers will be able to share documents that can help their clients. Videos like breathing exercises can help people with anxiety.

By making a group chat available to their clients, healthcare providers give their clients the ability to immediately get hold of them. In these moments, being able to talk to a specialist or community members is very helpful.

For example, imagine someone having a panic attack. That’s never a good scenario. Symptoms like nausea, trembling, and hyperventilation cannot be put on hold. You have to act fast. By adding a health chat room to their services, healthcare providers ensure their clients’ accommodation by providing immediate assistance.

A Health Chat Room Fosters Community

Promoting an environment where users feel safe and supported is part of the duty of healthcare professionals towards those with mental health issues. A group chat fits the bill perfectly. It’s a place where borders don’t apply and like-minded users can help each other achieve a common goal.

Usually, on the first visit, visitors of a group chat might just be there to help themselves. When they begin sharing their experiences to one another, that chat room becomes a community. Before long, the group chat can become a self-sustaining community, one that supports and regulates itself. The first visitors are the ones that now initiate to help one another. From a simple group chat, a community has been built by its members. A group chat such as this can look after itself with minimal to no intervention from a healthcare provider.

Why Chat Rooms are Ideal

The group chat is ideal for healthcare providers for a number of reasons.

The community described above would take time and effort to build. But not to worry – many group chats have plenty of options to secure themselves. In the given scenario, the chat owner can appoint an administrator who will look over the chat. This is a trusted person of the owner and will manage the chat when the owner is not around. If a user starts to troll, harass, or otherwise misbehave, an appointed administrator can do the following:

delete their messages,
suspend them, or
even remove them from the chat.

With measures like this in place, the group chat stays safe and the healthcare provider’s level of care is not compromised. While many institutions have office hours, you can access and operate a group chat continuously as long as it is hosted. For many, this is the best advantage. Accessibility is one of the strongest points of a chat.

A health chat room also provides users an option to be anonymous. Many people don’t feel comfortable discussing their mental health issues in a real-world setting. They feel more at ease speaking from the comfort and security of their home. This is their own version of a safe space, in a chat configured to their preferences (for instance, only audio). This setup encourages clients to speak freely and results in better therapy sessions.

For people who have nowhere else tot turn, a health chat room is a valuable method of treatment and therapy that could dramatically benefit them. By adding this innovative and timely weapon to their arsenal, healthcare providers are prepared to fight all illnesses, whatever form they come in.

Next Step for Online Help

As previously stated, this is a safe space for you and your customer. This is the focus of expert’s chat. This also helps you protect your privacy and the privacy of your customers.

With expert’s chat, you are the master administrator. You are able to see your customer’s every move. As the admin, you are the only one who will see who’s active. Other users, for example, your clients, won’t be able to see other active users.

Expert’s chat also allows you to be paid via paid access option. This means that your clients will need to pay an entrance/subscription fee before he/she can connect with you.

To enable expert’s chat, just click “Chat rooms” and choose expert’s chat or paid expert’s chat.

Expert’s chat is a private chat wherein you can connect with users privately. Paid expert’s chat is the same with expert’s chat, but this is the chat with a fee.

Conclusion

As the next step for healthcare providers, health chat rooms provide better options for people who struggle with their mental health. Not only for mental health, but also issues like unforeseen allergies and more. A health chat room is great for today’s modern world.

If you’re interested in creating your own health chat room or your own community, you can do so by signing up our site. If you have questions or suggestions you would like to share, we’d love to hear it. You can contact us on our Twitter and Facebook pages.

Posted on August 14, 2017May 10, 2021 by Editor