BACKGROUND
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of online mental health treatments have grown exponentially. Yet additionally, it seems inevitable that this technical resource is here to stay at health centres. However, there is still very little scholarly literature published on this topic, and therefore, the impact of the changes that have had to be dealt with in this regard has not been studied
OBJECTIVE
This study aims to evaluate the differences in the establishment of the Therapeutic Alliance (TA) based on the intervention modality (online or face-to-face), the type of attachment and diagnosis.
METHODS
Participants: A total of 291 subjects participated in the study, 149 of whom are men (51.2%) and 142 women (48.8%) between the ages of 18 and 30. Instrument: sociodemographic data, SOFTA-o (Escudero & Friedlander, 2001) and Relationship Questionnaire (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991).
RESULTS
The results show that the treatments conducted face-to-face obtain significantly better scores in the creation of the TA than those conducted online. The same holds true with attachment, in that users with secure attachment show a better TA than those with insecure attachment, although there were no significant differences with the diagnosis, age and sex.
CONCLUSIONS
We believe that professionals are not yet prepared to conduct remote treatment with a degree of efficacy similar to face-to-face.
It is essential for professionals to get training in this new technical resource and to understand and incorporate the variants it entails into their daily practice.