Online Counselling
EDF’s on-line counselling service aims to improve community access to professional counselling support and referral services, particularly in the rural and regional areas of NSW. The service is free and counsellors respond to emails from Monday to Friday between the hours of 9am to 5pm. The service offers on-line text based counselling to people suffering from an eating disorder and to their families and friends.
EDF’s counselling service can be accessed from any computer in Australia with a dial-up or broadband connection to the internet. This can be from a personal computer at your home, workplace or community setting (e.g. library, school, internet cafe or community centre). No special equipment or downloads are required.
Why use email counselling?
The answers are many and varied, depending on who you are, where you are from and your budget. Some of the advantages of email counselling are:
- Time Poor - Email counselling allows you to avoid the necessity of making an appointment, travelling to the counselling rooms etc. You can create, read and reply in your own time.
- Less Confronting - By writing emails you can possibly discuss issues which you are not comfortable verbalising face to face.
- Got it in writing - by having everything in writing you can review your emails and the counsellors responses as and when you need. You don’t need to remember what was discussed.
- Better timing - it often takes a week or so to schedule an appointment face to face by the time you match your schedule with the counsellors. Email counselling happens when you need it to, the counsellor will generally respond within 24 hours, if not sooner but sometimes due to heavier workloads it may take longer.