Role of empathy in facilitating help-seeking and therapeutic self-disclosure through online platforms

Abstract

Patients with psychological disorders can find it difficult to seek help or share information with their therapist. Contacting a web-based helpline can serve as a first step in getting support and disclosing therapeutically relevant information. An empathetic response on an online platform may make it easier to seek further help and to subsequently share the information with a health professional. An experimental study with 183 participants and two levels of feedback (no feedback versus empathetic feedback) showed that an empathetic response to disclosing information online does not increase help-seeking or make later self-disclosure to a health professional more likely, and the hypothesis was therefore not supported. However, the results suggest that an empathetic response decreases the likelihood of seeking help from a friend. The quality of interactions on an online platform may hence not have an effect on help-seeking or self-disclosure to a health professional, but the online interactions may influence help-seeking from other sources.