Online therapy is a new type of psychotherapy , it is simply not psychotherapy transplanted online no more than telephone interventions are simply psychotherapy transplanted to the telephone, crisis intervention is psychotherapy done quickly, or play therapy is psychotherapy done with toys. This is an extremely simplistic point of view which minimizes the richness and differences associated with this new medium, and the unique characteristics that accompany it.
Online therapy uses the richness of language to help bring about change in the client's life.
Language, whether it be written or oral, is the core component of communication. Nothing about online therapy makes these two components any more difficult to achieve. Nor does their achievement come at a cost in terms of quality or understanding. Online therapy reaches out to the majority of people who would never seek professional mental health services . The U.S. Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health in 1999 showed that the majority of people who have diagosable mental disorders do not presently seek out or obtain professional treatment.