Assessing Satisfaction, Technology Usability, and Therapeutic Alliance in Tele-psychotherapy from Patient's and Counselor's Perspective

Telemental health is one of the most successful aspects of telehealth. In this study، we focus on family therapy as a branch of psychotherapy and analyze its efficacy in telecommunication settings. This is a descriptive study conducted between October 2014 and February -2015. The sample of the study consisted of 30 patients having family therapy sessions via an internet based connection in a clinic in Mashhad. Data were collected by a questionnaire. The content validity of the questionnaire was established using a panel of 3 experts، and reliability was assured with internal consistency method. We also conducted a semi-structured interview with the psychotherapist in order to obtain his opinions on this method. The findings on three indices examined in this research showed that 80 percent of participants were satisfied with the interviewee/interviewer interaction، 73. 3 percent of participants rated usability of the technology as moderate to high، while 93. 3 percent of the participants reported high satisfaction with this method of telecounseling. The open-ended questions and the debriefing interview with the psychotherapist were reviewed، and general features of responses were extracted and classified. Iran with the wide land area and considerable number of rural and deprived areas، has a good potential to benefit from telehealth advantages. As it is the first study examining the efficacy and acceptability of telepsychotherapy in Iran، further research is needed in order to examine other aspects of this field to find the best solution suitable for our country.