Lahendus.net

Maali Käbin maalukas@ut.ee

Lahendus.net is a project of EPSÜ (Estonian Association of Psychology Students). The project is aimed at 13-25 year old children and young adults and provides an Internetbased psychological counselling service run by psychology students. The main goal of Lahendus.net is to prevent onset of mental and behavioural disorders and to support young people with their psychosocial problems. The Estonian word “Lahendus” means “solution”.

Young people aged 13-25 are considered the age group that university students feel most comfortable working with. Nevertheless, there are many older clients using the service, often aged over 40, who seek help either regarding their children’s problems, or for themselves. The youngest client who has made use of the service was nine years old. As the volunteers of the service are young themselves it has been found, in some cases, that clients bestow greater trust in Lahendus.net than mental health professionals – this is partly due to the stigma associated with “seeing a shrink”, and partly because of previous bad experiences with mental health professionals.

Themes of the letters vary but the most prevalent problems are all kinds of relationship issues, but there is also an alarming rate of depressed clients. Suicidal thoughts are not rare. In cases where somebody has a serious problem or we suspect a psychiatric disorder, we always try to redirect clients to professionals.

As yet, we are not professionals ourselves but what we can offer is emotional support from a non-bias and non-judgemental perspective. In addition, we promote alternatives to maladaptive coping strategies and aid in teaching social skills. Many people who write to us view their problems as a Gordian knot, the students involved in answering these letters, think practically and offer support in structuring client’s thoughts or even cutting the “knot”.

Online counselling also provides challenges for students involved, the process is time-consuming and therapeutic relationships created online can be as intense as real-life ones. Lahendus.net is provided by psychology students in their third or fourth of undergraduate study but also graduate students can become involved and practice their skills in counselling. The service is constantly supervised by practicing psychologists and psychotherapists.

The project has a specially developed secure software system for the consulting process as well as the data recording. Within the web page, there is an internal mail exchange system and clients can decide whether the conversation remains anonymous and/or private. More than 4000 people have registered and more than 30 000 letters have been exchanged since November 2001. The project has also a Russian language-module. The whole counselling process is limited to digital means.

We receive an average of five to six letters each day; these are divided between the counsellors who are currently in the schedule. The initial letter received from a client is answered promptly, within a maximum period of 72 hours; consequent letters from the same client are answered within approximately 5 days. Development of several internal control mechanisms has guaranteed that our clients always receive their answers within this time and the quality of the service can be maintained.

Approximately 70 psychology students are currently involved in Lahendus.net, some being more active than others but all are eager to help. During the previous two years it has become evident that there are many people who entrust Lahendus.net with their problems and see no problem in an impersonal medium like Internet. There has been subtle criticism of the project from academic circles but we are working on proving the effectiveness of the project by implementing a research project to thoroughly study the effectiveness.

We also have special educational meetings that include seminars, workshops and lectures by professional psychologists and psychiatrists 4 times a year. Extensive work has been put into our new database for the users of our portal. It encompasses many areas of youthconcerning work, such as all types of counselling, youth centres or support groups.

Feedback on the services we offer has been mainly positive. Clients have stated that our letters have brought smiles to their faces, they have received emotional support, that it is helpful to write about one’s problems and that they are grateful that a project like Lahendus.net exists.

My personal experience as a counsellor in Lahendus.net has been entirely positive. I have learned a lot from those people who have sought help from us. During my practice with real clients, I have become more relaxed and emphatic. In addition, the project has enabled personal development of the valuable counselling skills of active listening: rephrasing, reflecting and summarizing.

During my initial involvement in the project, I was afraid that I might have detrimental effects on somebody, as I am not yet a professional. My time working within the project has taught me that for the people who seek help, brief contact in writing regardless of the quality of the writing is better than nothing. I have also been affected by the clients who write desperate and suicidal letters, and then suddenly stop writing. It is clear the kinds of thoughts this interaction might provoke, but I have learned, and more experienced Internet counsellors have repeatedly said that the vast majority of those who do not write back, are better off than before.

It is incredibly touching to receive a letter, maybe a month, maybe a year after the client stops writing saying “Thanks for being there for me when I needed it, now I am doing fine, and above all I know that there are people out there who are willing to help.”