Don’t know why the idea had not occurred to me, before, but it seems to me, there’s at least two ways to share information about yourself (1 – tell someone, directly or 2 – let others learn about it on their own) and after watching a lot of sessions of HBO’s InTreatment series I formed the impression that therapists learn directly from the patient, listening carefully and applying what they already know according to the psychoanalytic method they are trained in.

However, I wonder if value therapy could be amplified were Social Media and Social Networks added?

For example, to start with, were Dr. Paul Weston, played by Gabriel Byrne, were to treat his patient, April, by being a member of her Social Network (say, a Facebook Friend) along with weekly sessions in person, an additional perspective would be added that would either amplify the value of the therapy, hasten it (possibly) or perhaps, widen it’s scope.

In fact, there’s already therapists using Social Media as part of a patient’s therapy – a quick search at Google brought up the Online Therapy Institute’s Social Network on Ning and there’s even a book that’s being published soon on  Therapy Online: A Practical Guide.

However, my thought is not so much to replace normal therapy with it’s online or even Second Live (or other virtual world) equivalent as to take existing therapy and add Social Networking to it.

For example, if Paul’s patient, Mia, were to simply share her activities and email, text the therapist, and, in this case, Paul, was into receiving Twitter updates and perhaps, look at Facebook updates from patients like Mia, then the in person sessions would be much richer and not only would Mia talk about what she wants – but Paul could interject with what he observed over the previous week – or from her history – as shown on Facebook.

I can’t say this isn’t happening, somewhere – some progressive therapists and their patients are certainly doing this – but it’s not part of the wider practice, yet.

I predict, it will be.

And furthermore, it provides some “objective” way to measure success of the therapy – I know I’m going on the limb by saying this – but once a patient opens themselves to share with their councilor what they are already sharing with everyone else – they provide ancillary opportunities for growth and feedback  that were never originally part of the therapy, to begin with – like the possibility of feedback, between sessions.

According to Compete.com, and great analytics service that always seems to get better and better, with time (and my input, btw) “In Treatment” is in top 10 keywords that drive traffic to HBO website last month.

In Treatment seems to be most popular where I live, in NY according to Google Insights for Search.