Feeling Blue? TherapyRoom offers online therapy to South Africa via Skype

Psychology is one of those fields that took some time for people to warm up to. Looking after your body is commonplace, looking after your mind is optional… right?

Slowly the field took flight, and now it’s not too strange to see your therapist more often than some of your closest friends. Taking that practice online is yet to really cement itself in South Africa, although online psychotherapy has been around for a while in the USA and UK. Leading the South African charge though, is a company called the TherapyRoom.

TherapyRoom is effectively just an online practice — home to Samuel Waumsley Clinical Psychologists. Just as you would book an appointment with, and then visit, a psychologist at their practice, you do exactly the same thing with TherapyRoom, but all online.

Book online. Pay online. And most importantly, have your session online via Skype. TherapyRoom calls itself a “safe space where clients and registered clinical psychologists are able to connect conveniently and efficiently online.”

Using Skype means that clients can choose whether they want to use video, voice call or just text chat for their 50-minute session, allowing an extra layer of control and comfort that many clients will find appealing thanks to the online format.

All the therapists are registered with the HPCSA (Health Professions Council of South Africa), and there are currently five listed on the website, although the website has a portal for more psychologists to potentially join the online practice. Existing expertise ranges from relationships/couples counselling to depression and anxiety and more.

The core concept, Waumsley told Ventureburn, is that one can find “one’s own therapy room online through our practice, all necessary admin and functionality being online.”

Online psychotherapy could well see an unprecedented convenience to getting help, and using tech such as a mobile phone or personal computer creates a distance or ‘safety net’ that might actually put clients at ease during therapy, similar to the anonymity that such a service as LifeLine provides.

Payments currently accepted are via EFT or PayFast. For more information, or to book an appointment now, check out the TherapyRoom website.