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Breaking Down the Screen: Italian Psychologists’ and Psychotherapists’ Experiences of the Therapeutic Relationship in Online Interventions during the COVID-19 Pandemic

(1) Background: The COVID-19 pandemic posed new challenges to clinical practice and delineated future directions for online interventions in psychological care. The present study aimed to explore Italian psychologists’ and psychotherapists’ experiences of online interventions during the pandemic, fo...

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Autores principales: Tomaino, Silvia Caterina Maria, Manzoni, Gian Mauro, Brotto, Giada, Cipolletta, Sabrina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9859036/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36673792
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20021037
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author Tomaino, Silvia Caterina Maria
Manzoni, Gian Mauro
Brotto, Giada
Cipolletta, Sabrina
author_facet Tomaino, Silvia Caterina Maria
Manzoni, Gian Mauro
Brotto, Giada
Cipolletta, Sabrina
author_sort Tomaino, Silvia Caterina Maria
collection PubMed
description (1) Background: The COVID-19 pandemic posed new challenges to clinical practice and delineated future directions for online interventions in psychological care. The present study aimed to explore Italian psychologists’ and psychotherapists’ experiences of online interventions during the pandemic, focusing on the strategies they used to develop and maintain therapeutic relationships with their patients. (2) Methods: Between February and July 2021, 368 Italian psychologists and/or psychotherapists completed an online survey. A mixed-methods analysis was conducted, using Jamovi to analyze quantitative data and ATLAS.ti 9 to analyze qualitative data. (3) Results: Of the participants, 62% had never delivered online interventions before the pandemic; though 95.4% were delivering online interventions at the time of the survey, many reported facing technical disruptions (77.1%) and having little confidence in the online setting (45.3%). Feeling present in online sessions—facilitated by emotional attunement, active listening, and conversational spontaneity—was reported as “very important” by 93.6%. (4) Conclusions: Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic allowed a great leap forward in the use of online interventions by Italian psychologists and psychotherapists. This period of upheaval generated not only a positive change in their attitudes toward and intention to use online interventions but also revealed associated technical and relational issues that must be properly addressed.
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spelling pubmed-98590362023-01-21 Breaking Down the Screen: Italian Psychologists’ and Psychotherapists’ Experiences of the Therapeutic Relationship in Online Interventions during the COVID-19 Pandemic Tomaino, Silvia Caterina Maria Manzoni, Gian Mauro Brotto, Giada Cipolletta, Sabrina Int J Environ Res Public Health Article (1) Background: The COVID-19 pandemic posed new challenges to clinical practice and delineated future directions for online interventions in psychological care. The present study aimed to explore Italian psychologists’ and psychotherapists’ experiences of online interventions during the pandemic, focusing on the strategies they used to develop and maintain therapeutic relationships with their patients. (2) Methods: Between February and July 2021, 368 Italian psychologists and/or psychotherapists completed an online survey. A mixed-methods analysis was conducted, using Jamovi to analyze quantitative data and ATLAS.ti 9 to analyze qualitative data. (3) Results: Of the participants, 62% had never delivered online interventions before the pandemic; though 95.4% were delivering online interventions at the time of the survey, many reported facing technical disruptions (77.1%) and having little confidence in the online setting (45.3%). Feeling present in online sessions—facilitated by emotional attunement, active listening, and conversational spontaneity—was reported as “very important” by 93.6%. (4) Conclusions: Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic allowed a great leap forward in the use of online interventions by Italian psychologists and psychotherapists. This period of upheaval generated not only a positive change in their attitudes toward and intention to use online interventions but also revealed associated technical and relational issues that must be properly addressed. MDPI 2023-01-06 /pmc/articles/PMC9859036/ /pubmed/36673792 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20021037 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Tomaino, Silvia Caterina Maria
Manzoni, Gian Mauro
Brotto, Giada
Cipolletta, Sabrina
Breaking Down the Screen: Italian Psychologists’ and Psychotherapists’ Experiences of the Therapeutic Relationship in Online Interventions during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title Breaking Down the Screen: Italian Psychologists’ and Psychotherapists’ Experiences of the Therapeutic Relationship in Online Interventions during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_full Breaking Down the Screen: Italian Psychologists’ and Psychotherapists’ Experiences of the Therapeutic Relationship in Online Interventions during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_fullStr Breaking Down the Screen: Italian Psychologists’ and Psychotherapists’ Experiences of the Therapeutic Relationship in Online Interventions during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Breaking Down the Screen: Italian Psychologists’ and Psychotherapists’ Experiences of the Therapeutic Relationship in Online Interventions during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_short Breaking Down the Screen: Italian Psychologists’ and Psychotherapists’ Experiences of the Therapeutic Relationship in Online Interventions during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_sort breaking down the screen: italian psychologists’ and psychotherapists’ experiences of the therapeutic relationship in online interventions during the covid-19 pandemic
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9859036/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36673792
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20021037
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