The Effect of Cognitive Behavioral Oriented Psycho Education Program on Dealing with Loneliness: An Online Psychological Counseling Approach.

Introduction Loneliness is the situation in which the individual feels not understood and lonely (Russell, Peplau, & Cutrano, 1980); an unpleasant mood experienced as a result of the difference between the current social relations and desired social relations (Peplau & Perlman, 1981); a situation in which there are the social relations needed by the individual or different social relations, however which relations do not include intimacy, sincerity and emotiveness (Weiss, 1973). According to Young (1982), loneliness is the lack of satisfying social relations or psychological stress accompanying this lack. Loneliness leads to the development of undesired problems in the individual by making the individual having emotional difficulty. Among these problems are anger directed to self and others (Lehnert, Overholser, & Spirito, 1994; Civitgi, 2011), depression (Laurie, Turner, Julia, & Heather, 2012; Qualter, Brown, Munn, & Rotenberg, 2010), self pity and social disharmony (Baker & Bugay, 2011; Joiner, Thomas, Peter, Seeley, & John, 2002), shyness, low life satisfaction and sadness (Booth, Barlett, & Bohnsack, 1992; Janne, Koen, Filip, & Luc, 2012), sleep and anxiety disorder (Heinrich & Gullone, 2006), hopelessness, though of and attempt to suicide (Batigun, 2008; Chang, Sanna, Hirsch, & Jeglic, 2010; Schinka, Dulmen, Bossarte, & Swahn, 2012), low optimism and subjective well-being (Hasida, 2012; Ottenheim et al., 2012), disruption of daily life style and high stress (Doane & Adam, 2010), low interpersonal disorders and eating disorder (Levine, 2012), low life satisfaction (Azimeh, 2011), cognitive distortions, avoiding affiliation and nonfunctional attitudes (Hamamci & Duy, 2007), thought of death and withdrawing from social interaction (Ayalon & Shiovitz, 2011), and social harmony difficulty (Duru, 2008). Online psychological counseling (e- counseling) is a type of therapy which is based on the mutual interaction of the client and the therapist via internet, which allows for connecting on web based education program and which is based on applications such as e-mail, fax, telephone, mutual correspondence and webcam (Castelnuovo, Gaggioli, Mantovani, & Riva, 2003; Roehlen, Zach, & Speyer, 2004). Online psychological counseling is one of the leading internet based counseling methods (Gainsburya & Blaszczynskib, 2011; Kaltenthaler et al., 2006; Kleina et al., 2010; Mantled et al., 2012). Online psychological counseling is an application which is based on mutual correspondence or video and voice communication between the client and the counselor in order to eliminate the symptoms of the problem, rarely structured and which mainly includes education program based on cognitive-behavioral counseling model and which is similar to face-to-face therapy (Abbott, Klein, & Ciechomski, 2008). This problem deals with problems such as milder depression, anxiety, phobia, loneliness and stress, but not with first degree problems dealt with by face to face therapy and which are away from reality from such as schizophrenia, paranoia (Mallen, Vogel, & Rochlen, 2005; Roehlen, Zach, & Speyer, 2004). In the studies, on second degree problems and follow-up of the treatments of the patients after face to face therapy, it was proved that online psychological counseling is a quite influential approach (Klein, Richards, & Austin, 2006). While Nowadays, therapy via internet has started to become a method which is increasingly applied. Lately, among Germany's patients, it was seen that 90% of the patients who do not go to the clinic get psychological assistance via internet and 40% of them continue to get assistance via internet after clinic (Eichenberg, Blokus, Brahler, & Einstellung, 2010). Cognitive behavioral oriented online psychological counseling is an important approach which provides psychological support with the opportunity of broad application of technology which can develop effective, acceptable, practicable solutions. …