Maybe We Should Have Been Seeing Our Therapists Online This Whole Time
Therapy is simultaneously one of the easiest and hardest forms of health care to move online.
On one hand, there’s no reason its core actions—talking and listening—can’t be done from your couch, rather than the one in your therapist’s office. But so much of therapy lives outside those core actions. Body language can help therapists make key observations; entering a new environment can shift a patient’s mindset; and sitting physically together can make difficult conversations feel easier. Those benefits are often obscured when therapy, like so much nowadays, happens on a screen in your home.
The question, as my colleague Jeffrey Kluger explores in a new story, is whether the pros outweigh the cons enough for teletherapy to outlast the pandemic.
Telemedicine of all kinds has taken off in the era of social distancing, but there’s perhaps no better example than teletherapy. Prior to the pandemic, almost 64% of respondents to an American Psychiatric Association (APA) poll said they never used virtual sessions, Kluger reports. Now, that number has fallen to just below 2%. The trend has obvious benefits. Teletherapy is convenient, particularly for patients who don’t live close to a clinician, and virtual appointments could allow patient-therapist relationships to survive moves and life transitions. Dr. Jay Shore, chair of the APA’s Telepsychiatry Committee, told Kluger that patient improvement also seems to happen just as fast online as it does in person.
But so much of therapy can’t be measured in hard data, and that’s the tricky part. “If somebody is really, really emotionally distraught [in person], you can pass them a tissue, you can go sit beside them on the couch and be a little closer, you can offer to get them a water,” Shore told Kluger. “You could suggest it through the computer but you can’t do it."
Ultimately, the benefits of teletherapy come down to patient preference, like so much in mental health care. But Kluger and Shore agree that a mixed approach may be the best of both worlds. Having a handful of sessions in person to establish a relationship could set you up for a successful virtual therapy experience later.
“Getting to know a caregiver in person first made it easier to go online later,” Kluger says of his own situation. “The experience felt almost seamless, though I do miss those little grace notes—the opening of a door and the gathering.”
A phone will never replace those things—but it may get closer than you think.
More than 24.4 million people around the world had been sickened by COVID-19 as of 2:30 a.m. ET today, and more than 831,000 people have died. Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
On Aug. 27, there were nearly 276,000 new cases and 5,890 new deaths confirmed globally. Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here is every country with over 300,000 confirmed cases to date:
Doctors in South Korea are striking as the country tries to tamp down a new cluster of about 400 new coronavirus cases nationwide. The government has announced plans to add more doctors to its workforce in preparation for future public-health crises, but many medical residents and interns argue it should instead focus on raising salaries and improving working conditions for those already in the workforce. About 16,000 interns and residents have been on strike since Aug. 21, and the Korea Medical Association said today that it plans to organize a national strike beginning Sept. 7.
Officials from the United Nations have expressed concerns about a COVID-19 outbreak in Syria, Al Jazeera reports. After years of war and civil unrest, Syria’s health care system is fragile. Many health care workers don’t have adequate personal protective equipment, and testing capacity is far below what’s needed. Syria has reported only 2,500 cases of COVID-19 so far, but representatives from the UN Security Council said in a statement that’s probably “just the tip of the iceberg.”
Parisians are now required to wear face masks in public, as coronavirus cases continue to surge in many parts of France. The policy, which went into effect today, applies to Paris and some of its outlying areas—but includes an exception for runners and cyclists, the BBC reports.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 5.8 million coronavirus cases as of 2:30 a.m. ET today. More than 180,000 people have died. Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
On Aug. 27, there were nearly 46,000 new cases and 1,116 new deaths confirmed in the U.S. Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
U.S. President Donald Trump painted a falsely rosy picture of his administration’s coronavirus response as he accepted the Republican party’s nomination during last night’s Republican National Convention. Trump said during his acceptance speech that his administration has approached coronavirus with an emphasis on “the science, the facts and the data,” despite months of criticism from experts that he has done just the opposite. On numerous occasions, Trump’s comments about the efficacy of face masks, vaccine development and coronavirus treatment have clashed with those from scientific experts.
Two publicists working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have been fired following the agency's much-criticized emergency use authorization announcement for convalescent plasma. Experts lit into FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn after he made exaggerated claims about the effectiveness of using blood plasma to treat COVID-19. Now, the New York Times reports he has fired the agency's top spokeswoman just 11 days after she was hired. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the FDA's parent agency, also terminated a PR consultant who advised Hahn to apologize for his misleading comments, the Times reports.
Officials in Louisiana and Texas, two states already struggling to contain coronavirus, are warning that Hurricane Laura’s full effect on pandemic response won’t be known for weeks. The powerful hurricane, which hit the Gulf Coast yesterday, has temporarily suspended much of Louisiana’s coronavirus testing, which means authorities won’t know how fast the virus is spreading as people shelter and relocate from the storm. “We’re basically going to be blind for this week,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said . Texas Governor Greg Abbott urged his state’s residents to continue using caution. "Remember, just because a hurricane is coming to Texas does not mean that COVID-19 either has or is going to leave Texas," Abbott said.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of August 28, 1 a.m. eastern time. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
How Are Epidemiologists Handling Back-to-School Season?
Parents across the country are grappling with the same question: Is it safe to send my kids back to school? Epidemiologists and infectious-disease experts are no different. TIME’s Tara Law asked 10 experts about the choices they’ve made for their kids. Read more here.
How the Pandemic Has Changed Cancer Care, In 4 Charts
The coronavirus pandemic has had a domino effect on the rest of the medical system. Cancer care is one of the clearest examples, with screenings and diagnoses plummeting due to pandemic-related lockdowns. Read more here.
Experts Are Concerned About Vaccine Hesitancy
It won’t matter when a COVID-19 vaccine is available if no one wants to get it—and that’s a real fear for experts. Even people who normally support vaccination have expressed concerns about the expedited development process (and political motivation) pushing the coronavirus vaccine forward, the Wall Street Journal reports. Read more here.
What to Do About ‘Maskne’
The Cut has some news you can use: How to prevent breakouts when you’re constantly sweating under your face mask. Read more here.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Jamie Ducharme and edited by Elijah Wolfson.
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