The current pandemic condition has a direct impact on the way people communicate, including the communication carried out in the counseling process and psychological therapy in Indonesia. According to the condition, Center for Public Mental Health (CPMH) Faculty of Psychology UGM held webinar titled Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Basic for Online Counseling on Friday, November 20, 2020.
The event that attended by 210 psychologist and psychiatrist aimed to provides a detailed overview of online therapeutic practices, in particular about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
In this session, CPMH collaborated with Prof. Theo Bouman (Professor of Clinical Psychology University of Groningen, Netherlands) and Prof. Sako Visser (Professor of Health Care Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands) as the speakers.
The event began short speech from Prof. Kwartarini Wahyu Yuniarti, MMedSc., Ph.D. as Deputy Dean for Research, Community Service and Dr. Diana Setyawati, M.HSc., Psychologist as the head of CPMH.
The first session started with brief explanation about the concept of CBT and steps to prepare for online therapy, such as assessment and intervention. According to the speakers, CBT can applied on clients with various backgrounds, age groups, intelligence and socioeconomic status.
Furthermore, the speakers also conveyed that digital CBT can be done via telephone, WhatsApp Messenger, video sessions (Facetime, Zoom) and other official platforms.
The event was also provide a role play session that carried by the two speakers in order to give an overview of how online therapy process conducted. They also practice with several therapy scenarios with different cases.
The event was closed with discussion session which hosted by Dr. Diana Setyawati, M.HSc., psychologist, the moderator.