‘Your phone cannot be your therapist’

Sir, – Finn McRedmond makes important points about phones and wellbeing (“Your phone cannot be your therapist”, Opinion & Analysis, June 8th).

I agree that the emergence of online therapies seems to suggest that, “without a man in glasses and a chaise longue in an oak-panelled room, maybe an artificial friend on the small screen will suffice”. As one such “man in glasses”, albeit without “a chaise longue” or “oak-panelled room”, I share her concerns, but I might stop shy of describing our phones as “a source of doom”.

In 1875, Irish asylum-doctor James Duncan worried similarly about the impact of the technology of his day (steam power) on mental health, but added that “we can no more change the mechanical and commercial character of the age than we can arrest the sun in his course [. . .] It must not be forgotten that the evil complained of arises, not from mechanical contrivances in the abstract, but from the abuses connected with their working and incidental to their introduction.”

We use our phones in an inappropriate, over-reliant way. Phones can channel useful advice, link people to support, and even assist with psychotherapy. But, as Finn McRedmond intimates, more is often needed: psychological treatment from a qualified therapist, in-person assessment by a GP, or mental healthcare from a registered professional.