Earlier this week I attended the Second Annual Summit on Behavioral Telehealth at Harvard Medical School’s Joseph B. Martin Conference Center. I had the privilege of attending last year and again this year. My role at the conference was as an ISMHO (International Society for Mental Health Online) exhibit booth representative. The Summit offers workshops on Disease Management and ways in which the medical community is using technology in various forms for prevention and intervention strategies. While there were no specific offerings related to online counseling and supervision, I was intrigued by two sessions in particular: Virtual Worlds and Social Networking. John Lester (Pathfinder Linden) of Linden Labs spoke of various ways people are utilizing Second Life to enhance mental health and quality of life and John Grohol of PsychCentral moderated a panel discussion about health-related social networking websites.
The attendance this year and last was made up primarily of physicians but I did note that this year the summit offered continuing education credits to psychologists and social workers in addition to CME credits. Hopefully the yearly event will become more inclusive of all mental health practitioners in the future.
I plan to attend future summits so stay tuned for my summary next year!
