Positive Technology Journal

From Smart Mobs 

Instant messaging, favored by chatting teens and office gossips, is a growing tool for therapists counseling people on everything from smoking cessation to sexual-abuse trauma, reports the Pioneer Press.

Proponents say the text-based conversations are appealing because they're fast and anonymous — users can log onto a number of online services and connect with therapists who know them only by screen names. But many in the mental-health community say the format is too impersonal for effective treatment and should be only an adjunct to face-to-face counseling.

... Text messaging, critics say, doesn't allow therapists to pick up on important visual cues to a patient's true state of mind.

"What one gleans as a psychiatrist in a clinical assessment is not just from the words one says but from the emotions," says Paul Appelbaum, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University and past president of the American Psychiatric Association. He says doctors need to assess the way a person walks, sits, smiles or tears up.