Teletherapy is a new form of service delivery that allows practitioners to provide consultation services to clients despite geographical distances. Although Teletherapy had been used in other social service fields, research on Teletherapy within the field of behavior analysis is still relatively new. Teletherapy could advance our field by allowing behavior analysts to provide consultation and supervisions services to a higher number of clients, since Teletherapy would reduce the time and cost spent traveling to different family homes. Research had already shown that Teletherapy can effectively teach parents to implement new skills to their child with autism. This study sought to expand research by comparing Teletherapy supervision sessions with in vivo supervision sessions with four personal support staff. Social validity and treatment integrity were measured in order to assess if staff felt supported during Teletherapy sessions, and to compare any differences in staff performances across the supervision formats. Results show that 75% of the staff felt just as supported during teletherapy supervision as they did during in vivo sessions, and all staff felt that the program used to conduct teletherapy sessions was easy to use. In addition, there was no difference in staff performance for all 4 participants across supervision formats. Future research on Teletherapy is also addressed, and the positive impact Teletherapy can have in advancing the field of behavioral analysis.

Within the deaf population, an extreme mental health professional shortage exists that may be alleviated with videoconferencing technology – also known as telehealth. Moreover, much needed mental health education within the deaf population remains largely inaccessible. Researchers have forewarned that the deaf population may remain underserved if significant changes do not take place with traditional service delivery methods. The goal of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of telehealth in teaching psychoeducational objectives, with special emphasis given to its application to the deaf population. The results of this study indicate that telehealth can be considered to be an efficacious and cost effective option in delivering health care to the deaf population. Results also indicate participant satisfaction with the technology.

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