![]() ![]() Also, clients who depend entirely on text messaging for mental health services may be at risk when they encounter crises and emergencies. Clients would also not have access to their social worker's visual cues, which may also be important.Ĭlients with very serious mental health challenges and risks may not get the in-depth and sustained help they need, which would be more available in the context of more traditional face-to-face clinical relationships. Without visual contact, many say, a clinical social worker would not be able to see and respond to a client's clinically relevant facial expressions and body language, including smiles, winces, tears, and squirms. Most critics comment on likely problems when clinician and client are not in each other's physical presence. ![]() To date, the vast majority of the social workers I query-most of whom are clinicians-have shared their skepticism about the ability of this kind of text-based service to substitute for traditional, face-to-face social work counseling. Typically, I ask audiences to share their thoughts about this therapy-by-text service I try my best not to "lead" the audiences one way or the other, pro or con. I share this website option as an example of the ways in which digital technology is changing the nature of social work practice and ethical standards. ![]() Since that interview, I have shared information about this novel clinical service with various groups of social workers at a number of professional conferences throughout the United States and abroad. Users are linked with licensed clinicians who agree to respond to their messages once daily. I explored the new service's website and, lo and behold, the service offers unlimited text message counseling via an app that users download on their smartphones. "Do you mean e-mail exchanges and online chat between clinicians and clients?" "No," the reporter said. Several months ago I received a call from a reporter for a national publication who asked me what I thought about what she described as a new therapeutic service whereby therapists and clients communicate solely by text messaging. ![]() Eye on Ethics: How R U Doing 2day? Social Work in a Digital Era ![]()
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