ABSTRACT
Although important research on remote psychotherapies was conducted for many years, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the spread of remote therapies. However, studies focusing on children and the family population are still quite new. Exploration of therapists' views and experiences of using online psychotherapy interventions is of importance. In addition to these, confusion caused by referring to remote therapies with different names and using them for different purposes and forms makes it difficult to know which evidence is available for tools and forms. Therefore, this study aims to investigate psychotherapists' views and experiences of video conferencing psychotherapy (VCP) for children using a qualitative description method. In line with this purpose, semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with seven female specialists who conducted VCP with children in different cities in Turkey. Data collected from the interviews were analyzed using an inductive content analysis approach. Analysis results indicated two themes and ten sub-themes that described benefits, new opportunities as well as limitations and difficulties of VCP provided to children. Results showed that VCP enhanced accessibility for both therapists and children and their families, enabled comfort and flexibility, and was economic. Besides, such psychotherapy was found to increase fathers' participation in psychotherapy. On the other hand, difficulties are experienced in therapeutic relationships in the VCP process; the child's characteristics affected the applicability of the psychotherapy; maintaining focus became difficult; lack of materials and toys affected psychotherapy applications; children's connecting to psychotherapy from home caused privacy issues; and technological problems affected communication and sustainability.
ABSTRACT
This study investigated the experiences and views of adult people living in Turkey about the changes in their usual life during the pandemic, the effects of these changes, difficulties they had, and ways of coping with these difficulties. The study adopted a qualitative design within the scope of the phenomenological approach. The study sample consisted of 449 adults. The findings showed that the changes due to the pandemic were divided into eight categories that included social life, work-life, daily routines, emotions, school life, economy, and cognitive and physiological changes. The participants reported both positive and negative effects of these changes in terms of emotions, cognition, work and school life, physiology, and social life. In the pandemic process, the participants were found to have difficulties in emotions, social life, work-life and economy, physiology, and daily routines. To cope with these difficulties, the participants were found to demonstrate various emotion-focused, problem-focused, and appraisal-focused behaviors.
