Until recently, most therapists didn’t need to balance treating our clients’ emotional health with protecting our clients, and ourselves, from COVID-19. The novel coronavirus presents difficult choices for all mental health professionals who work with clients in-person.
Are you putting yourself and others at risk by seeing clients in your office?”
Unusual times call for unusual solutions
The coronavirus creates anxiety for mental health professionals and clients. Just when clients most need our support, COVID-19 interferes with our most basic tool: face-to-face meetings. One option for mental health practitioners is to move in-person sessions and groups online. The online option provides maximum safety for you and for your clients.
Click here for our tips on providing continued care with telehealth during COVID-19.
Even as lockdowns and shelter-in-place restrictions are eased, we may prefer to keep working online for our own safety or for the safety of our clients.
Stay in touch with vulnerable clients
- Check-in on high-risk clients that may be unable to leave the house or need extra mental health support. Reach out to past clients that you feel may be personally at risk during this time.
- Reach out to verify the safety of clients stuck in an unstable or unsafe living situation.
3 ways to let clients know that it’s safe to get mental health support
- Communicate: Let your clients know about the changes in your practice. Send an email, share on social media, and reach out through text or telephone.
- Offer Expertise: Your clients and your community will appreciate tips to deal with anxiety and depression during this time. A video, email, or social media with tips will not go amiss! If you have been collecting emails for clients or colleagues, now is the time to start an email newsletter.
- Provide Support Online: Consider offering virtual support groups as a way to meet the needs of your clients and of your community. If a group is too hard to organize, consider filming a short video with tips to keep anxiety and depression at bay, or do a Q&A based on the most common questions you are hearing from your clients.
Your account manager at TherapyEverywhere can help you organize email newsletters, online groups, recorded videos, and social media postings.
9 simple rules to keep safe for in-person sessions
When we are able to resume in-person sessions, some simple precautions can provide protection for you and for your clients as long as the coronavirus remains an active public health threat.
- Make sure you are in compliance with all regulatory requirements relating to social distancing.
- Remove non-essentials from the waiting areas such as magazines, brochures, or fidget toys.
- Prepare a new, individual package of tissues for each session.
- Wash your hands when you arrive at work and after each session.
- Encourage clients to wash their hands at the beginning and end of each session. A posted handwashing policy may help but a personal request will be more effective. Make a hand sanitizer available in your session room.
- Wipe down your door handles, office equipment, and office furniture every day.
- Post an illness policy for your practice on the front door. Dedicate the beginning of each appointment and initial consult to making sure your clients understand and are able to follow the policy.
- Consider taking your sessions outdoors. Ensure that you have a quiet area where you will still be able to hear each other.
- Avoid physical contact but make sure to compensate verbally and using eye contact.
Seeking solutions for moving and marketing your practice online? For contributing to your community’s resilience? Book a free consultation. If you already are a Therapy Everywhere customer, reach out to your account manager at Therapy Everywhere. Looking forward to hearing from you!