Navigating psychotherapy in the COVID-19 Era: overcoming challenges, harnessing benefits, and practical recommendations

Objectives: As the world struggled with the COVID-19 pandemic, adopting preventive measures, such as wearing face masks and videoconferencing, became ubiquitous in various settings, including psychotherapy. Identifying challenges, benefits, and recommendations may support the effective delivery of psychotherapeutic care in similar conditions in the future. Recent literature has highlighted mostly therapists’ perspectives on those challenges, benefits, and recommendations. Since therapists and clients seem to differ on what they experience and value in therapy, understanding psychotherapeutic care from clients’ perspectives should also be considered. Thus, the present study aimed to understand therapists’ and clients’ perspectives on challenges, benefits, and recommendations for videoconference therapy and therapy using face masks and if there are differences regarding those perspectives. Methods: We analyzed 738 responses to the open-ended questions of a larger online survey on the quality of relational processes in psychotherapy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants’ responses were collected worldwide between December 2022 and July 2023. A total of 117 therapists and 64 clients participated in the study. We conducted a deductive content analysis to examine trends in participants’ answers and Fisher-Freeman-Halton tests to determine differences between therapists and clients across categories. Results: The findings highlighted that while clients tended to focus on normalizing and trusting the new therapeutic environments, therapists were concerned with improving communication and refining their therapeutic skills to maintain the effectiveness of therapy under the new conditions. Conclusions: This understanding enabled the formulation of targeted recommendations that address the unique needs of each group to enhance their therapeutic experiences.