Teletherapy is popular and effective, but post-pandemic funding reductions may reduce rural patients' access to it

Qualified mental-health care services can be hard to find in rural America, where 75 percent of counties have no or few providers. Teletherapy is one way to bridge the gap, and it works, writes freelance author Amy Ettinger in a guest op-ed for The Washington Post. 

After helping her husband through his own mental-health crisis, Ettinger increasingly realized she needed help herself. But she has long-standing anxiety about going into a doctor's office, a phobia often called "white-coat syndrome." She worried that she wouldn't feel a connection to her therapist when appointments were via Zoom meeting, but to her surprise, things went well.

"Right away, I began to notice the benefits," Ettinger writes. "For the first time in my life, I felt no anxiety before a therapy appointment. I found it comforting to talk to my counselor while wearing fuzzy house slippers. And to my surprise, I was able to share my emotions through a screen much more easily than I’ve ever been able to with an in-person psychotherapist."

Telehealth soared in popularity during the pandemic, jumping from about 7.1% of psychologists' appointments to 85.5%, and research shows it can be as effective as in-person therapy. However, Ettinger notes, some therapists and patients may not be able to continue the practice for long: "Emergency orders established by states as the pandemic took hold, which mandate coverage of telehealth visits and allow out-of-state providers to participate, are expiring. And some private insurance companies have begun rolling back telehealth coverage."