Best Therapy in Columbus for 2026
Therapy on your time, in your space

Like the name suggests, online therapy is a term used to describe mental health counseling that you can receive from the comfort of your own home in front of your PC or right at your fingertips on your smartphone. Looking for a therapist near you? Consider online therapy to eliminate the hassle of leaving home and to expand your options beyond looking strictly for a therapist near me or therapy near me.

Online therapy is a great way for people dealing with mental health issues to get easy, convenient, and reliable counseling that usually ends up being cheaper than in-person therapy. Please be aware that online therapy is not the right answer for urgent mental health emergencies. Anyone in need of urgent medical care should visit the nearest hospital to get the help they need.

Our Recommendations for Online Therapy

Where Are People Most Lonely?

Feeling lonely is something everyone goes through now and then. It can be influenced by factors like relationships, your living situation, and how happy you are. With that in mind, we set out to determine which states have more people feeling lonely by conducting an in-depth survey.

Expert Tips for Coping with Loneliness

Everyone feels lonely from time to time, but it’s important to learn how to cope with loneliness so it doesn’t affect your long-term mental and physical health. Here are some expert tips on how to cope with loneliness.

Recite Self Love Affirmations

Kelly Armatage, a trained counselor and CBT therapist, defines loneliness as an inner void caused by a disconnection from the heart or a rejection of oneself.

“In order to fill up this inner void, it is important to connect to our own heart, connect to our inner child, and open up to love,” says Armatage. One of the best techniques for connecting with your heart is reciting self-love affirmations such as, “There is love, fulfillment, peace, and joy from within.”

Armatage concludes, “As you connect with your heart, you will then know just how unlonely being alone can be.”

Try a New Hobby

Hobbies are an excellent approach to dealing with loneliness because they allow people to focus on activities they enjoy, contributing to a sense of purpose.

Whether it's painting, writing, gardening, or learning to play a musical instrument, a new hobby can bring a sense of fulfillment and self-expression, according to psychologist Dana Klisanin.

Go to Therapy

“The cure for loneliness is connection,” says Dr. Annie Zimmerman, a psychotherapist and author of Your Pocket Therapist. “The best way to be less lonely is to be vulnerable with a safe person.”

However, that’s not always easy. Sometimes, people need an unbiased third person to talk to about their vulnerability. “This is why therapy works — our hidden vulnerable parts finally feel seen and understood,” says Zimmerman.

Whether you live in one of the top loneliest states in America or not can affect how lonely you feel and can affect your levels of loneliness. Consider investing in an online therapy service as a supportive resource if you are experiencing loneliness.

Why Experts Are Pushing for a Huge Expansion of Online Therapy

One of the biggest benefits of online therapy is its ability to reach people who otherwise couldn’t make it to a therapist’s office in person. Although it may be tempting to want a therapist near you, searching for 'therapists near me' might not turn up the results you hoped for. David Kaplan, the chief professional officer of the American Counseling Association, told The Atlantic, “Online counseling can be especially useful with individuals in rural America, as a great many rural counties do not have a single licensed mental-health professional.” The magazine also mentions patients with agoraphobia, or those whose anxiety limits their mobility, as other potential benefactors of online therapy.

The web may just be catching on to this phenomenon, but the US military is no stranger to the benefits of distance therapy. For more than 20 years, the military has been using a form of teletherapy to help soldiers work through anxiety and PTSD who may not have had the luxury of “counseling near me.”

A recent study published in Behaviour Research and Therapy compared the effects of remote therapy compared and traditional face-to-face counseling. Researchers chose 132 military veterans with PTSD and provided each with 10-12 prolonged exposure therapy sessions. Half of the veterans were given face-to-face counseling at a VA center while the other half’s sessions were conducted by video conference from the comfort of the patients’ homes.

“Our effects with PTSD were just as good in person vs. home based telehealth,” psychologist Ron Acierno, who led the study, told the Huffington Post. While those who were given at-home treatments were less prone to completing the program than those who visited the VA center, Acierno and his colleagues were surprised and inspired by the lack of success between the two modes of therapy.

There’s been less pushback than you might expect from the psychology community, given that online therapy services could pose a real threat to traditionalists in the field. The American Psychological Association (APA) has covered the topic extensively, offering a hopeful, yet cautious endorsement of what it sees as a new avenue to helping those who need it find support.

“With some caveats, the Internet continues to be extremely useful for disseminating health and mental health information,” the APA said back in 2001. A more recent APA article, titled “A Growing Wave of Online Therapy,” celebrated online therapy’s potential and stated that “the onus is on psychologists to make sure they comply with federal and state laws.”

How Can You Connect With Your Online Therapist?

Most online therapy companies offer 3 main types of counseling: real-time chat, video chat, and phone chat.

Email and text message counseling is popular with people who want to be able to think out their questions and write them out before asking. These tend to not be free-flowing conversations like with phone or video chats, but being able to write out what you want to say can be preferable. Typically these chats are done through your personal email to a special, secure email provided through the site, which can help safeguard your anonymity.

Video chat will require a reliable internet connection and will allow you to speak with a counselor face-to-face, if not in the same room. It’s intimate, personal, and allows you to establish a rapport that can be more difficult with the written word.

Real time chat puts you into a secure line and allows you to chat back and forth with a counselor in real time. Think of it like having your own personal, private chat room with a counselor who’s there to listen to what ails you.

When you sign up for an online therapy service, you’ll typically be asked to take a short quiz to determine which sorts of issues you’re dealing with, which can be used to help the service match you with a counselor who may specialize in your concerns. If you’re seeking out online counseling for your child, the quiz will ask you a lot of questions about what you think the child needs help with, before sending the child an invitation on your behalf.

How Much Does Online Therapy Cost?

The prices vary by company, but typically online therapy services charge a monthly fee to use the service, and don't charge by minute or hour or text. For instance, BetterHelp , one of the bigger names in the industry, charges a flat fee of between $40-$70 per week, including all messaging, chats, phone, and video sessions.

These memberships tend to be quite flexible, and allow you to quit at any time.

Most online counseling is not covered by insurance, so while it’s cheaper than in-person therapists, you will typically have to pay out of pocket.

Choosing Your Therapist

There are several important things to ask your therapist when you are first introduced to each other. Some of these questions might include:

• When and how often do you typically respond?
• Do you work evenings and weekends?
• What is your therapeutic approach?
• What are your areas of expertise?

So what should you do if you get matched with a therapist that you don't like? If you don’t feel connected to your therapist, most sites give you the option to request a new one. While you shouldn’t necessarily play switcharoo each time you dislike or disagree with your counselor’s input, you should make sure you are working with someone you trust — and who you can relate to. It shouldn’t take too long to be comfortable, but it does take some time to build a working, reliable and dependable relationship with your therapist.