TPC Journal-V6, Issue 4- FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor /Volume 6, Issue 4 390 citations of articles; these additional terms were searched until no more semantically-related terms could be found. The initial generated list and the accumulated terms were compiled and used to begin data collection. We searched state mental health licensure board Web sites ( N = 151) in all 50 states for the counseling, marriage and family therapy, psychology and social work professions. State licensure boards’ Web sites were accessed and we reviewed telemental health-related laws, statutes, rules, policies (which will all be referred to as policies henceforth) and newsletters. In addition, the first author called and sent e-mails to state licensure board personnel to verify whether telemental health policies existed when policies were not located on the Web site. All terms related to telemental health services were collected and added to the initial list, resulting in a final list of 42 terms. We broadly defined the presence or existence of telemental health policies as the use of one or more of the 42 terms. Research assistants searched each state licensure board Web site with the final list of terms to ensure a thorough search. We collected the terms used on each state board Web site to examine the consistency in term usage across all state licensure boards. Next, we categorized the terms used on all state licensure boards’ Web sites by mental health profession (counseling, marriage and family therapy, psychology and social work). The data was then analyzed for themes. Results State Board Policies We analyzed the data collected from state mental health licensure board Web sites. We identified the state mental health licensure boards with telemental health policies. Sixty-five mental health licensure boards had specific telemental health policies. In the following 14 states, not one of the licensure boards had issued a policy about telemental health: Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Washington and Wyoming. Next, we examined the data across mental health professions. The existence of state board policies varied widely for each profession within most states. The number of state licensure boards that had issued telemental health policies for each profession was nearly evenly represented among the first three disciplines as follows: counseling ( n = 22), psychology ( n = 22), social work ( n = 21), and marriage and family therapy ( n = 1). We found that only 14 states had telemental health policies for all mental health professions: California, Colorado, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia. State Terminology Used for Telemental Health We identified the terms found on state licensure board Web sites. The following 19 unique terms were used across the 65 state licensure boards that had issued policies: distance counseling, distance therapy, electronic-assisted counseling, electronic means, electronic practice, electronic telepractice, electronic transmission, Internet counseling, Internet practice, online counseling, online psychotherapy, remotely, technology-assisted, teleconferencing, telehealth, telemental health, telepractice, telepsychology and teletherapy. E-mails were sent to 40 state board personnel because telemental health-related laws or policies were not located on the state licensing board Web site. In these cases, 16 state licensure board staff