It’s pretty difficult these days to think of much else, besides the high cost of gasoline. It seems only a short time ago gasoline was roughly a dollar a gallon, and now it’s easily four times as much.

For those of us who were around in the mid-1970s all of this seems very familiar. Overnight, it seemed, auto plants went from manufacturing cars like my 1973 Ford LTD, with humungous bench seats, to the more frugal Honda Accord I would end up driving only a short time later. I expect we’ll see a similar effect as we shift away from the family trucksters that are so popular, to hybrid vehicles and who knows what else.

For a change, all of our politicians seem to agree on something; there is no quick solution to the problem. According to the experts, developing and adopting alternative forms of energy will take many years. In the meantime, it seems that as long as only a handful of companies and countries control the supply of oil and as long as demand stays high, then high prices will be a reality. Perhaps, it’s time to dust off the dictionary and look up the term “Oligopoly.”

As a result of the high prices and market turmoil we’re forced to more carefully evaluate the cost. We have to consider, “Is it really worth being there?” Fortunately, technology has evolved some ways to address the high cost of travel. For a small monthly fee, you can get a subscription to a service like, GotoMyMeeting, which claims to make online meetings easy and hassle-free. My experience has been that they do make online meetings easy and hassle-free, but of course, there’s a downside. It helps if everyone is comfortable interacting via speakerphone and PC. It also takes some time to get comfortable running these types of meetings. There’s nothing worse than cracking a joke as an icebreaker and then hearing nothing but silence on the other end of the line. Those people on the other side may be chuckling to themselves, or they may be speed dialing their boss to complain. Over distance, it’s hard to know. 

Then, there are the “smart” phones, which allow users to check e-mail, surf the Internet and basically do all the same things they could do on a regular computer. The Wall Street Journal reports that the use of smart phones has increased by 10 percent in the past year alone (WSJ, May 27, 2008). They still represent only about 17 percent of the total cell phone market, but with prices becoming lower and adoption more commonplace it won’t be long until everyone will be carrying the Internet in their pocket. Smart phones include the iPhone, Blackberry and others based on a mobile version of Windows or some other operating system.

I recently purchased a smart phone, rationalizing it as a necessity for my work, which often takes me far from home. Sometimes I need to respond quickly. (I also admit that it seemed like a fun toy to have.) Now, I can establish my “presence” from just about anywhere with a decent cell phone signal. I love having access to everything all the time; and for communicating with my teenage daughters — emailing or texting them is much quicker than actually trying to speak with them. It was an adjustment though, since I found myself beset by an overwhelming curiosity to check my email, and at the same time, dreading incoming email because it meant more work. It also took me a while to get all of the notifications — the fancy bells and whistles. I finally had to turn the cell phone off. Ironically, I now go through periods of time where I’m less connected than ever because I have to have some kind of boundary between work and home. Even now, as I write this, I’m wondering, “Do I have any new emails?” It never ends.

Just as many “connected” people struggle with being constantly accessible, IT Managers are struggling to integrate these new devices into corporate networks. Do we really want our health records (including treatment records) to be traveling around in the pocket of every doctor, counselor and nurse in the organization? And what happens when they leave their smart phone on the plane or in a restaurant?  The HIPAA ramifications of this are a little chilling. I imagine this is inevitable, as all of our communications and even our entertainment moves toward something those in the industry like to call “convergence.”

Considering the explosive growth in the number of Internet users and the availability of high-speed Internet access, it seems that Online Counseling hasn’t taken off like it should. A quick search on the Internet reveals only a page or two of online counseling services; and these services range from the fairly respectable, to the slightly shady. How would you really know if an online counselor was shady? What if the counselor was perfectly legitimate, even highly skilled, but just really bad at designing a website? 

Fortunately, I’m one of millions of others who have had an experience shopping online and I suspect that choosing an online counselor might be similar. When I’m shopping online I look for the following:
Is the retailer reputable? I would check with acquaintances to see if they had prior pleasant shopping experiences with the retailer. I might also look to see if the retailer is a member of the Better Business Bureau or some other official sounding organization. One of the 10 online counselors I checked out was a member of an organization called the Internet Society of Mental Health Online (ISMHO). It looked pretty official, and as far as I know, it is a legitimate organization. However, only one of the organizations was a member, so they don’t seem to have what you might call a ubiquitous presence.
Can I trust the retailer with my secure and private information? Just to be safe, I might buy something small and see how that turned out. I’ve used online retailers and then noticed an uptick in the number of Spam emails I receive. Coincidence? I think not.

Are the prices clearly marked? When I shop at Amazon.com the price of everything is clearly marked. For online counseling, several of the sites I visited want you to register or send them information first. A couple of them had their prices posted and they seemed a little expensive. Maybe I’m off base but it seems like if the counselor can work from home in his or her pajamas that they ought to provide a little bit of a discount.

Is the person qualified to provide the services? All of the counselors I saw had plenty of credentials. One organization was even licensed by the state. But how do I know it’s really the counselor providing the services and not the receptionist with some extra time on his or her hands? There’s no practical way to know. Some of the best counselors I’ve met are horrible spellers and have atrocious grammar so I guess that isn’t going to tell me much.

I suppose there’s a niche for online counseling, and probably, many people have been helped in this way, but it isn’t for me. I want to be able to sit down with the person, make eye contact, and let them figure out what’s going on using all of their clinical judgment and all of the intangibles that make them really good at what they do. Smart phones, the Internet and all the tools that allow for remote contact allow us to establish a presence; but just like so much else online, that presence is illusory and can only exist if the person is really physically and mentally present. That’s good news for the counseling profession. I don’t think the cost of gasoline is going down anytime soon. We do know that everyone has problems and the counseling profession really helps people to work through those problems. When the cost of being there is high, it’s nice to know it’s worth it.

Comments

Add New Search RSS

Write comment
Name:
Email:	do not notifynotify
Title:
	Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.26

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."