Category: TeleHealth

There are a great many reasons for the popularity of Life coaching. Here are several of the main ones:

Reason 1. Life Coaching is perceived to benefit highly functioning, generally stable individuals who are stuck, struggling with a difficult life decision or a looking for more expert advice or skills training to help them perform better in some areas of their life.

Reason 2. Life coaching focuses more on the present and the future.

Reason 3. Life coaching is goal oriented, solution focused and tends to conclude over months rather than years and often with measurable results.

Reason 4. Life coaching is more direct, interactive and often involve the coach teaching the client new skills to accomplish their goals.

Reason 5. Life coaching can be virtual via the phone or a video platform. As such, Life coaching allows great flexibility and convenience for the client and coach alike.

Reason 6. Because of the focus on resolving current issues and or teaching new skills, clients reach goals in a shorter period of time.

If you think life coaching may be something you might want to experience, contact Dr. Robert Heller for a free mini-consultation to see if you are a good fit for this approach.

As a psychologist, I am always looking at ways to be more efficient and effective in working with my clients. I came across a very interesting study reported in an online publication called, the Science Daily.  The article headline was “Psychotherapy Via Internet as Good as/ if Not Better Than Face-to-Face Consultations.”

It is not clear if the “therapists” were psychologists or not, nor the level of training or experience of the therapists. Six therapists treated 62 patients, the majority who were suffering from “moderate depression”. They received eight sessions of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (the approach that I generally use with depression) .

In my opinion, eight sessions is a relatively short number of visits as it usually takes 2-3 sessions to properly evaluate clients and most clients with depression have co-existing problems that also need to be treated.

After 3 months of treatment sessions, 57% of those treated with on-line cognitive behavior therapy were considered to no longer be depressed compared to 42% of those who received conventional face to face cognitive behavior therapy.

On-line classes in education are growing in use and I believe the same is happening with psychotherapy and related off-shoots like counseling, coaching, etc.

In my experience as a psychologist for almost 40 years now, I think there is a subset of people who do very well with structured, distance learning and a number of people who do not.

However, many clients benefit to a significant degree by telling their story face-to-face and being heard by a caring, compassionate individual. Beyond that, the specific methods of cognitive behavioral therapy provide the tools that help clients not only to feel better but to get better.