teletherapy

Almost half of the roughly 4.8 million adults who visited a medical professional for mental health or substance use disorders in 2023 did so exclusively through teletherapy, according to a KFF Health News analysis of the latest data from UCLA’s California Health Interview Survey.

About 24% of adults used a combination of face-to-face and teletherapy in 2023, while roughly 23% got help exclusively in person, according to the survey of about 20,000 California households.

A recent national study of patients in the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system found a similar pattern: Fifty-five percent of mental healthcare continued to be provided via telemedicine, a figure that jumped after patients shifted to teletherapy by necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Teletherapy is certainly more convenient, enabling patients to see their therapists from the comfort of home.

“Research has basically shown that there’s no difference between teletherapy versus in-person therapy — so, basically, as effective as in-person therapy,” said Tao Lin, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety, who recently conducted an analysis of several studies comparing teletherapy and face-to-face therapy.