Mobile apps offer tools for everything from depression, social anxiety, and binge eating to phobias, OCD, postpartum problems, and substance abuse recovery. In some cases, they’re even being marketed as actual providers of therapy, or at least therapy-like help. Since solace-by-app is here to stay, what do therapists need to know?

Conditioned by the experience of life on the screen, clients today find it harder to concentrate on face-to-face conversation. They may not even see its value, feeling more comfortable with the self they can present through their digital devices. More than ever, the mores of therapy—the value therapy places on being with, forming an empathic bond, and the quiet attention necessary to do this—has become a crucial cultural corrective.

To date, virtual reality’s most visible therapeutic role has been in the treatment of phobias and other conditions where it’s served as an adjunct to imaginary and in-vivo modalities. However, newer applications have started to move beyond the idea of altering our sense of place to emphasize altering our very sense of self. So what will that mean for our field?

The rise of text therapy is raising ethical questions for its practitioners.

How to handle end-of-session bombshells therapeutically—and still wrap up on time.

Some down-to-earth advice on practicing in a small town, where there’s no way to escape being seen and talked about.

Each therapist who becomes seriously ill faces a weighty choice between silence and disclosure with clients.

“Therapy robots” have been touted as an answer to loneliness and a new way to build social skills. But will they change the way therapists work?

A movement to integrate trauma-informed care into our justice system aims to decriminalize mental illness and address a foundational cause of mass incarceration.

Supporting transgender children doesn’t always mean rushing toward medical intervention.