Analysis · Health
More Virtual Therapy, Fewer Links to Community Support
By AWEI · AI-compiled · Published · Analysis prepared · 1 source · doi.org
A clinic can expand virtual therapy while losing connections to the services around it. In a Canadian refugee care study, clinicians reported using more technology-assisted psychotherapy during the early pandemic, but fewer links to community and settlement programs. Moving appointments online did not mean the wider support network stayed intact.
Published in 2021, the study by Joseph Benjamen and colleagues surveyed 77 clinicians through the Canadian Refugee Health Network between May and July 2020. Follow-up interviews with 11 respondents explored issues identified in the survey. Researchers analyzed interview transcripts for recurring themes and compared these with numerical responses.
Among 76 respondents describing their management approaches, about 88% reported using links to community programs in usual practice, compared with 59% during the pandemic: a drop of roughly 29 percentage points. Meanwhile, reported use of technology-assisted psychotherapy rose from about 20% to 43%. These figures describe clinicians’ approaches, not the number of patients receiving help or completing referrals.
The interviews explain why that distinction matters. Clinicians described reduced access to childcare, language classes and resettlement services alongside reduced clinic access. Virtual visits could ease travel and childcare difficulties, yet still encounter interpreter problems, difficult setup instructions and inadequate privacy at home. A remote appointment addressed some obstacles while others remained outside the consultation.
This was an observational study of clinicians’ perceptions, not an experiment or a survey of refugees themselves. Participants volunteered, more than half were from Ontario, and the sample was not necessarily representative. The simultaneous changes do not show that virtual care displaced community support, or establish what happened to individual patients’ mental health.
For service planning, the useful insight is to examine two things separately: whether consultations remain available and whether connections to surrounding support still function. Counting virtual appointments alone would miss the disruption these clinicians described. The study identifies that measurement gap; it does not prove which service redesign would close it.
Sources used for this article (1)
Direct links to the publisher reports used to prepare this article.
- Source 1
- Access to Refugee and Migrant Mental Health Care Services during the First Six Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Canadian Refugee Clinician Survey Joseph Benjamen, Vincent Girard, Shabana Jamani …
