Apps & Your Mental Health / Mental Health Tech Might not Have Your Best Interests in Mind
Picture this: you’ve been inundated with messages about addressing your mental health. It’s all around you. You decide to take the plunge and seek therapy. The search, from the jump is daunting, so you see the option of the therapy app. Looks good—convenience of therapy when and where you want it, access 24/7 to your therapist, you can change therapists if you don’t like the current one… Sounds great! Where do I sign?
Before you take that step, there should be some things you might want to know before you take that route:
1) Therapy apps such as BetterHelp and TalkSpace are essential tech companies and not primarily mental health practices. Their priority is to expand their reach in the tech space; the emphasis on mental health is secondary.
2) Just to add some clarity here, the idea that one has 24/7 access to a therapist sounds appealing, but in reality, it is NOT therapeutic. Consistency- meaning same person, same time, same place promotes an internal sense of safety, undoubtably essential for effective therapeutic action. And based upon our research it is NOT what people seeking therapy state they are looking for:
https://doi.org/10.1080/07351690.2021.1992232
PSYCHOANALYTIC INQUIRY
2021, VOL. 41, NO. 8, 603–623
Going Beneath the Surface: What People Want from Therapy Santiago Delboy, LCSW, MBA, and Linda Michaels, Psy.D., MBA)
3) Effective psychotherapy relies mainly on two unassailable tenets: consistent relationship with and trust in the therapist. Seems tough to maintain a consistent relationship with an anonymous image of a potentially ever-changing “therapist.” And as for trust, these entities have the potential to share your data with a third party to serve their growth directive.
4) Additionally, these app-based “therapy” sites are limited in what psychological issues they will address. They are not equipped to handle serious mental health crises. And in some cases, the “therapy” they provide is in direct contrast to best practices.
5) Further, if you believe that a long-term, in person psychoanalytic therapy has no evidence to support its efficacy, that it is not “evidence-based treatment,” please see:
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018378
(Shedler, J. (2010). The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 65(2), 98–109.)
6) In short, a tech-based mental health platform might sound appealing, but in our research, we’ve found that most people seeking psychotherapy want a long-term solution that gets at the root of the problem, with an in-person psychotherapist:
https://doi.org/10.1080/07351690.2024.2423575
(PSYCHOANALYTIC INQUIRY
The Therapy World Has Changed: Where Are We Now?
Santiago Delboy, MBA, LCSW and Linda L. Michaels, Psy.D., MBA).