ADHERENCE AND SATISFACTION IN ONLINE VS. IN-PERSON GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY IN TIMES OF COVID-19

ABSTRACT

In recent decades we are witnessing an important growth of clinical experiences based on the use of technology for the development of psychotherapy, we are in a period of research and theoretical development before the incorporation of an emerging resource and its integration into professional practice. Our work starts from a bibliographic search about online group psychotherapy through the most relevant publications to date, we made a synthesis of information about the advantages and disadvantages, results on its effectiveness. In addition, we provide a summary of our clinical experience in online group psychotherapy by video conference at the Day Hospital of the Psychiatry Service, analysing the results obtained on adherence to treatment and satisfaction of participants, in comparison with face-to-face group psychotherapy. In this study we compared the assistance in Day Hospital during the months of May and June 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic) in face-to-face group psychotherapy, with the assistance in online format in the same months in 2020. In this second group, we evaluated the subjective perception of satisfaction through an ad hoc questionnaire carried out by this group by merging previous questionnaires. We observe that attendance decreases significantly in the virtual group, not finding significant differences in the comparison of attendance by diagnostic group;that satisfaction with online psychotherapy is acceptable;and we observe the development of phenomena typical of group relationship in its virtual format.