Nesreen Alrowili
Al Jouf University, Saudi Arabia
Title: Online Counseling occupy a wide position in the Mental Health field in arab society in general and in Saudi Arabia in particular
Biography
Biography: Nesreen Alrowili
Abstract
Online counseling is one of the recent and important services that grow up fast in the field, and shows it’s significant in treating clients. There are several researchers supporting the effectiveness of online counseling. In fact, online counseling is being highly effective in Arab society in general and in Saudi Arabia in particular. As in an Arabic culture, it is hard for them to be opened about their mental health issues, which may relate to how they have been raised on not to complain about their mental life because of the stigma. People are open to mental health therapy but not to the degree that go and seek therapy easily. Researching the word online mental health counseling would show huge result of online counseling websites, includes professional and unprofessional websites. However, there is not any specific data can tell how many websites are practicing (out there). Working in the counseling field made me realize how much people are using e- therapy and preferred it more than one on one therapy sessions. I have practiced and done online counseling for almost a year, most of my clients refuse to go to see a therapist when I had to refer them to regular sessions and rather to do it online. They were feeling that online counseling made them to be more honest, which also allowed me to provide better treatment plans for them and allowed them to be more honest with themselves while responding to the treatment plan, where they were being more comfortable to not be judged. Range of my clients considered visiting psychiatric for medical evaluations after couples of e-therapy sessions. This paper indicates that online counseling is believed to be so effective for the Arab society because it gives them higher privacy than regular sessions.