The Digital Divide: Couple and Family Therapy Programs' Integration of Teletherapy Training and Education.

ABSTRACT

The mental health field is increasingly integrating and growing a teletherapy presence, and couple and family therapists are uniquely situated to offer these services based on our history of innovative approaches to therapeutic services. To do so successfully, careful consideration of training and education must occur. To evaluate current teletherapy training and education opportunities of COAMFTE accredited couple, marriage, and family therapy programs, an inductive qualitative content analysis was conducted on the responses of 95 faculty at COAMFTE accredited programs. Findings indicate that more than two thirds of the participants were in favor of teletherapy integration in training programs; however, most programs currently do not offer such opportunities. Barriers that prevent such integration were highlighted as well as existing concerns to training graduate students in teletherapy. Implications for training programs, policies, and regulations are discussed.