Category: Interapy

Interapy Team

See if you can spot the most enthusiastic individual (me) in the picture.

The fine folks at Interapy including me have moved to a new office building in the heart of Amsterdam.

The location is ideal and the new premises is a big improvement over the previous situation. Also Keizersgracht is special not only because it is right next to one of the nicest canals in Amsterdam but it also has the name for special people and companies.

My department room is twice as big and this is the most important step to professionalizing the development program.

I'm not as lucky with the traveling time as I have to travel two more train stops (add seven minutes) in addition to the four extra tram stops and the five minute walk.

It's kind of funny how since I started living over here, that Amsterdam keeps tugging at me to come back and either live and/or work there, like a magnet.

Here's a short list of examples of times I've worked and/or played in Amsterdam:

• Slotervaart Ziekenhuis when I first met Thea
• American Discount Bookstore - Kalverstraat
• Singel Canal - our 1st appartment
• Achter de Kolenkit - our 2nd appartment
• Uniface - Amsterdam Zuid-Oost
• Demon ISP - Herengracht
• TomTom - Oosterdoksstraat
• Telfort - Amsterdam Zuid-Oost
• Interapy - De Roeterstraat and Keizersgracht

This just can't be a simple coincidence. Maybe in my previous life I was some worldly merchantman during the Dutch Golden Age conducting my affairs in worldwide trade, residing in some fancy city dwelling in Amsterdam, married to a beautiful Dutch women with ten or more kids running around next to the canals.

As an experienced train commuter chalking up a couple more thousand kilometers every month between my hometown of Gouda and my work in Amsterdam, I've pretty much perfected the art of nodding off while sitting erect.

Sometimes it happens without me even realizing it, for example while reading a book or just staring out the window. Sometimes I even feel it coming and resist or just let it happen.

The amazing thing is that although I nod off in a kind of semi-hypnotic imaginary dream world, I remain erect and do not fall over. The bumps and jerking motions shift my body slightly to the left and to the right, but I never end up in the lap of the passenger across from me nor on the shoulder of the person next to me.

On occasion I dream of eating and wake up with my mouth open and my jaws biting up and down. Or if it is hot and I'm drinking a refreshing ice-cold substance.

I've trained my mind to sleep but to be alert at the same time. I do not know exactly how this mechanism works, it is like clockwork. Although the train stops along the way, I do not wake up or at least I believe that I am not awake until just the right moment: when the conductor announces Station Gouda! And when this announcement is not made or the public announcement system has short-circuited? I still wake up.

What is the role of emotion in computer-mediated communication (CMC) and can online interaction be considered a more useful tool than face to face (F2F) interaction in treating certain psychological ailments?

Scientific experiments have concluded that there is no indication that CMC is a less emotional or less personally involving medium than F2F.

On the contrary, emotional communication online and offline is surprisingly similar, and if differences are found they show more frequent and explicit emotion communication in CMC than in F2F.

In fact for certain ailments like burn-out, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTS) and mourning, online therapy has proven to be a very effective means of helping people cope and recover

Reference

"Online therapy offers many advantages over face-to-face therapy. Interapy includes psycho-education, screening, effect measures, and a protocol-driven treatment via the Internet for people suffering from post-traumatic stress. The present article reports the results of a controlled trial on the Internet-driven treatment of post-traumatic stress and grief in a group of people who manifested mild to relatively severe trauma symptoms. Participants in the treatment condition (n=69) improved significantly more than participants in the waiting-list control condition (n=32) on trauma-related symptoms and general psychopathology. The effect sizes were large. On most sub-scales, more than 50% of the treated participants showed reliable change and clinically significant improvement, with the highest percentages being found for depression and avoidance."

Interapy: A Controlled Randomized Trial of the Standardized Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Through the Internet.

Interapy: hype of wondermiddel?