Telepsychology: Public Speaking Fear Treatment on the Internet

UNTIL VERY RECENTLY, the possibility of starting real telemedicine or telepsychology systems was restricted by the cost of the equipment and by the lack of adequate infrastructures. Nonetheless, the technological advances we are witnessing at present have allowed the publication of a series of pioneering works with good and promising results. The analysis of what is happening in the field of telepsychology points to an important development to come in the following years. This work presents a telepsychology system to the treatment of public speaking fear. The system is composed of: (a) an assessment protocol that gives the patient a diagnosis of his/her problem, including the interference it is causing him/her, its severity, and the degree of fear and avoidance it is producing; (b) a structured treatment protocol, organized in separate blocks reflecting the patient’s progress; in this way, it is possible to ensure that the patient does not skip any step in the treatment (something quite common in the traditional self-help manuals), gaining more control over the process; and (c) an outcome protocol that assesses treatment effectiveness, not only at its end, but also at every intermediate step. It is the first work in a promising research line that examines the possibility of using the Internet for the treatment of psychological disorders. If the program proposed here achieves the necessary effectiveness and soundness, the range of psychological problems to which the program could be applied will broaden in the near future.