Half of all people who need psychotherapy quit after only a few sessions. And therapy can’t work if people stop going to their therapists. The solution? Get the advice and treatment you need from regularly scheduled phone calls with your therapist, say researchers from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, who have conducted the first meta-analysis of research on telephone-based psychotherapy. Research shows that nearly 90% of people who start teletherapy complete it, compared with only 50% of people who go to office-based therapy.

“The problem with face-to-face treatment has always been [that] very few people who can benefit from it actually receive it because of emotional and structural barriers,” says David Mohr, PhD, lead author of the study, which was published in Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice. “The telephone allows therapists to reach out to patients rather than requiring that patients reach out to therapists.” Mohr says that with office-based psychotherapy, only 20% of people actually show up for the referral, and half of those people later drop out of treatment.

Take depression, for example. Researchers found that when people received psychotherapy for depression over the phone, most of them continued with therapy long enough for it to make a difference. In fact, researchers found that teletherapy is becoming more widely used by therapists, especially among employee-assistance programs.

Teletherapy removes the barriers to receiving treatment: “One of the symptoms of depression is [that] people lose motivation,” Mohr says. “It’s hard for them to do the things they are supposed to do. Showing up for appointments is one of those things." People may also lack the transportation or time to travel back and forth to a therapist’s office. It’s hard to squeeze regular appointments into days already crammed with work, caring for kids or elderly parents and other family obligations, he says.

Want to find a teletherapist? Start with your health insurer or your employee assistance program to find a provider who can work with you via phone, researchers suggest. Or think about asking your current therapist to consider counseling by phone instead of through office visits.