Highlights: Telebehavioral health training is required by all state boards and professional ethics policies related to medicine and the mental health field. (See Guidelines) and most state license boards. While your offering may seem simple, credible training in telemental health or telebehavioral health has been created by experts, peer-reviewed and address many areas that may not have come to mind yet. Aside from legal and ethical issues, training will help shorten the operational learning curve and help reduce risk of the harm to the patient/client and protect your license and reputation.

Training in telebehavioral health is offered by several training groups. You’ll need to provide documentation of this type of training for your records. As a reminder, annual HIPAA training is required and should also be included in standard policies and procedures.

Terminology: The term “Telebehavioral health” broadly describes the professional treatment of mental health and substance abuse conditions at a distance through technology.  Telebehavioral Health as a term may be used interchangeably with Telemental health, though some would argue for a separation of terms based upon the separation between medical and non-medical services or addiction and non-addiction services. For the purposes of this website, the term will be used broadly in order to collate the resources. No differentiation is made in laws/regulations, ethics, or best practices for requirements based on the differences in terminology.

It is important to note that Telebehavioral health is a mode of providing mental and substance abuse services and is not a separate service in and of itself. This mode requires specific training, preparation and protocols to provide safe, effective, ethical and legal services.