What is online counselling?
All professional counsellors are trained to use a wide range of skills to enable clients to confidentially explore the issues that trouble them. Online counsellors have trained, in addition, to deliver these skills in textual form over the internet, as it has become clear that for many of us, writing about our problems can sometimes be more helpful than trying to talk about them. Online counselling is also a viable option for people wanting to try professional counselling without having to leave their keyboards.
Online counselling means that you can offload your feelings and thoughts at any time of day or night , plus you'll have a 'hard copy' of all of your sessions - all you need is internet access and privacy. 
In online counselling, the therapist works with their client as they do in a counselling room, but the collaboration develops around shared text. Some online counsellors offer counselling using email, others use instant messenger, Skype or video conferencing, and all should offer encryption services to protect their clients' privacy. Although encryption sounds complicated, Safe-mail.net offers a free, encrypted email service which doesn't require anything fancy and takes minutes to set up.
I work with my clients by evolving a Word document from the first email which we attach back and forth via Safe-mail, each adding to it in a different colour. It reads like a conversation but ends up looking (as one of my clients once put it) like a gas bill.
“Writing gives people time to pause and reflect and this may help the therapeutic process,” says Dr David Kessler of the University of Bristol who recently led a study on the effectiveness of online therapy published in The Lancet.* *Why the web could replace your shrink
Online counselling in the media:
Last night a PC saved my life.
Depressed people should get online counselling.
Online Psychotherapy is effective.
Of course, online therapy isn’t suitable for everyone or every kind of problem, but professional online counsellors will provide information on who is and who isn’t likely to benefit from their services, along with information for those in immediate or urgent crisis. There are several organisations that guide and inform the work of online therapists. The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) have published a set of guidelines and ACTO (Association for Counselling and Therapy Online) and OTI (Online Therapy Institute) have directories of professionally qualified online therapists.
