For Therapists-in-Training, a Peek Behind the Curtain

EBSCO’s APA PsycTherapy database offers streaming video of actual, unscripted client and therapist sessions. The database, which includes detailed metadata and abstracts that can be saved, downloaded, or printed, is a useful tool for students, faculty, and practitioners in mental health clinical environments and counselor education.

Product Overview/Description

The videos in PsycTherapy are made available through a partnership between EBSCO and the American Psychological Association (APA). At the time of this review, the database contains 980 streaming videos covering over 170 therapeutic approaches to more than 350 topics, offering clinicians, counselors, instructors, and students the opportunity to sharpen their skills by observing real-life sessions conducted by well-known therapists. For sensitive sessions, actors play the patients to maintain client privacy. Full transcripts of the sessions scroll beside the videos as they progress.

All videos have been recorded within the past ten years. New content is added as it is released by the APA, generally on an annual basis, with occasional additional videos released during the year.

On the EBSCO platform, users can search PsycTherapy alone or alongside other EBSCO research databases.

User Experience

The EBSCO platform is easy to navigate and user-friendly.

To review the database’s search and indexing capabilities, I chose the topic “post-traumatic stress”—a timely subject that can be narrowed depending on a user’s specific research interest. I started by entering the term “ptsd” in the basic search box.

From there, I was able to toggle between a (traditional) Boolean search or a natural language search.

Using the system-suggested search terms of ptsd or posttraumatic stress disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder, the Boolean search option produced 29 results, while the natural language search produced 33 results. For some users, the natural language search may help them narrow or expand their search parameters (Figure 1).

The search results page shows basic information and links to detailed metadata records. Users can filter searches by therapist and date. In addition to the therapist’s name, each metadata record contains an abstract, keywords, and subject headings, all of which can be downloaded, printed, and saved to the user’s MyEBSCO account. Users can also save or download a citation (Figure 2).

I decided to narrow the focus of my search to the impact of ptsd on military veterans and added the search term post traumatic stress disorder and the keyword s AND military service. As written, the search basically failed. But EBSCO’s SmartText Searching—which identifies the search terms the user has entered that most frequently appear in the database and uses them to create a weighted Boolean search—produced three results (Figure 3). The subject headings and keywords for these three results included terms that helped me further revise my search, ultimately leading me to a video entitled “Prolonged Exposure Therapy for Client With Combat-Related Trauma,” featuring the therapist Sheila Rauch, who now serves as the deputy director of the Emory Healthcare Veterans Program and director of Mental Health Research and Program Evaluation at the Atlanta VA Healthcare System. Using the “prolonged exposure therapy” approach, Rauch helps her client process trauma from a military shooting incident.

With the advanced search option, a user can search in specific fields, enabling them to limit the results by a therapist’s name or the publication date. The advanced search also permits users to easily mix types of search terms, a useful feature for experienced researchers who want to search using specific subject headings, keywords, names, etc. (Figure 4).

The metadata page for each result includes a link to view the video on the APA platform. On each video homepage, the video and transcript appear at the top, followed by an abstract (Figure 5). Each page also contains information about the therapeutic approach covered, the therapist, and topics related to the video content, in addition to demographic information about the client (age, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and nationality) (Figure 6).

From the video homepage, users can create video clips to embed in their university’s learning management system; videos can also be saved or identified as favorites. A “Related Content” section on the right-hand side of the page points to other video sessions conducted by the same therapist. Should the user be familiar with a particular therapist and their approach, this is a handy feature.

CONTRACTING AND PRICING PROVISIONS

Annual subscription cost is determined by a variety of factors, including student full-time equivalent (FTE), consortial agreements, and/or buying options.

EBSCO agreements allow for unlimited simultaneous users. User privacy is thoughtfully handled. Identifying user data is not captured unless the user decides to set up a MyEBSCO account; EBSCO will collect only the information that the user shares. Personal information is not transferred to or processed in a country other than the user’s country of residence.

Authentication Methods

As with other EBSCO databases, several methods of authentication are available, including IP authentication for users on-campus. Authentication for off-campus users or distance learners can be handled using Shibboleth, Open Athens, or EZproxy. Universities can use SAML or Single Sign On (SSO) for off-campus authentication. Licensing institutions must take steps to ensure that only their authorized users have access to subscribed content.

Accessibility compliance information, including VPATs, is available on the EBSCO Connect website. The documentation addresses WCAG 2.2 AA and relevant European Union standards. Accessibility testing audits are conducted by third parties. Users with visual impairments test resources using popular screen reader technology. As the video content is housed on an APA platform, relevant accessibility information is available on the APA PsycTherapy website.

Competitive or Related Products

A similar product, Counseling & Therapy in Video Library (CTVi), is available from the ProQuest/Clarivate company Alexander Street Press. CTVi comprises a series of collections covering foundational theoretical models of counseling and therapy and the evolution of therapeutic practice, contemporary issues and therapeutic approaches, and the most recent editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). While similar in topic to PsycTherapy, the content in CTVi is more mixed, including therapy sessions, presentations, lectures, workshops, ebooks, and ejournals.

Another competitor, Psychotherapy.Net, offers subscriptions to in-depth training videos in collections that include the library’s choice of 50 videos, 100 videos, or all 350+ videos, in addition to collections focused specifically on social work and arts therapies. The collections include a mix of clinical demonstrations, lectures, theoretical orientations, and live sessions. Users can browse by therapeutic approach, therapeutic issue, expert, and population. The platform offers continuing education credits.

APA PsycTherapy videos are also available through Ovid and ProQuest/Clarivate.

Critical Evaluation

The live client sessions in PsycTherapy offer students and early career practitioners a feel of what can happen when working with patients and a valuable opportunity to observe the interaction between therapist and client—how the client reacts and how the therapist responds. The visual clues available via video offer particular learning and research value.

EBSCO’s platform is clean and user friendly. Both the basic and the advanced search functions are intuitive and help guide the researcher through their search. The video content appears to be well-indexed and contains extensive tags that support useful search results.

The ability to search for live video sessions featuring well-known therapists alongside peer-reviewed articles from other EBSCO databases is a plus.

Recommendations

All types of libraries should consider a subscription to PsycTherapy. Undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty members, stand to benefit from the content.

References

Alexander Street Press, Clarivate. (n.d.). Counseling & Therapy in Video: Library. https://alexanderstreet.com/products/counseling-therapy-video-library

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). APA PscyTherapy. https://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/psyctherapy/

EBSCO Industries, Inc. (n.d.). EBSCOConnect. https://connect.ebsco.com/s/?language=en_US

EBSCO Industries, Inc. (n.d.). APA PsycTherapy. https://about.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/apa-psyctherapy

Psychotherapy.Net. (n.d.). Psycotherapy.Net Collections. Retrieved September 23, 2025, from https://www.psychotherapy.net/collections

VandeCreek, L. (2018). PsycTHERAPY. The Charleston Advisor, 2:1, 38–41. https://doi.org/10.5260/chara.20.2.38