Abstract

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, interest in telepsychotherapy has increased. Therefore, we aimed to examine the topics related to telepsychotherapy that were of public interest, by analyzing posts containing the keyword ‘telepsychotherapy’, after text mining. Furthermore, our study investigated any changes in the topics before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. We collected data from Naver, a representative portal site in Korea, from before (T1) and after (T2) the spread of the COVID-19 (as of January 20th, 2020), when the first case was reported in Korea. Frequency analysis, co-occurrence word analysis, and topic modeling were conducted. Three topics were derived from the data in T1: the prospect of the mental health care field, the understanding of human psychology based on IT technology, and the psychological problems of individuals. Meanwhile, five themes were derived in T2: support and provision of mental health services, psychological services related to children's development, psychological problems experienced in relationships, experience of psychological problems, and services delivered non-face-to-face. Our results revealed that interest in telepsychotherapy has increased after the COVID-19 outbreak, and expectations for telepsychotherapy have led to the actual services and experiences. Moreover, our findings also highlighted caregivers’ concerns for the impact of prolonged COVID-19 on child development. We discussed the implications and limitations of our study.