Like many others experiencing heightened struggles with mental health amid a turbulent year, Liu found the support she needed through teletherapy. The alternative to traditional in-person sessions has emerged as a critical resource during the pandemic, experts say, helping to reduce barriers to mental health treatment that previously may have deterred people from getting help. “I think of [teletherapy] as a dusty dirt road that no one wanted to take that is now a 16-lane highway,” said Ken Duckworth, CMO of NAMI. And with experts anticipating that the demand for mental health support will only keep rising even when the pandemic is over, teletherapy is probably here to stay, they say. “This is a ball rolling down a hill,” Duckworth said. “It’s got a lot of momentum. It would take something material to stop it.” But while providers and people in need of support have been buoyed by the positive impacts of teletherapy on mental health care, what those virtual services will look like in the post-covid-19 era remains “a big unknown,” Duckworth said.
