Online therapy is dangerous, critics say.
Quacks could set up shop and scam customers. Discontents who are looking for a quick fix could score drugs with a simple mouseclick. The entire mental health industry may degenerate into a Geraldo Riverian mess. At a Capitol Hill news conference last week, a coalition of medical practitioners and patient advocates released a set of guidelines to keep that from happening before the government gets a chance to step in and do it for them. But critics say those standards might not be enough, and warn that mixing professional counseling with the Internet is a potentially volatile situation that the government is not likely to ignore.