Was it Difficult to Find the Right Therapist?

I’m speechless. Even though Thought Path is in its infancy, our community answered our cry for help. Two weeks ago, when we publicly opened our interview process, we expected a maximum of twenty people to sign up. We were shocked when over sixty people registered. What’s even more moving is that over a third of these folks were complete strangers who found out about our project through word of mouth or social media. This outcome may be attributed to how dissatisfied people are with the current state of mental health.

As we near the end of our research phase, I’d like to take a moment to share our progress with the Thought Path community. Below you’ll find the results of our research, details on our pivot, and the backgrounds of our new team members.

If you missed the last interview session, never fear. There is a new opportunity to get involved. We want to hear how you found your therapist. Give us the good, bad and the ugly. Sign up for a quick phone call here!

Results

Over the span of two weeks, we conducted sixty-two interviews about participants’ mental health. Since mental health is such a broad topic, we focused our research on how people gauge their mental health. Below, we’ve included some of our findings:

*Note: participants granted us permission to share these results

I’ve included the charts above because I find them interesting, however, the following quote really shaped the path of our research.

“Patterns in my mental health are important to me, but I can only identify them in hindsight” — anonymous

We found that people use patterns in their mental health to identify elements in their life that affect their well being. For example, many students report a shift in their mental health when they return home for an extended period of time. This example may seem obvious, but that’s because it’s a macro change with an easily identifiable start/end date. There are other patterns that are more difficult to keep track of like shifts in solitude. These micro-changes are difficult to keep track of because they happen slowly and without obvious reasons.

In response to this, many people keep a journal. This allows them to synthesize their thoughts and reflect at a later date. For example, someone can compare their current state of mind with a previous time by flipping through old journal entries. In fact, many mental health professionals encourage their patients to maintain a journal. Through our interviews, we found that there are three categories of patients who journal:

1. The Regular- This person journals frequently. They have no problem setting aside an hour of their day to reflect, write, and reread.
2. The Part Time- This person wants to journal more often but maintains an irregular schedule. They rarely reread previous entries.
3. The Impatient- This person understands the benefit of journaling, but can’t convince themselves to begin.

We asked all three categories if they would use a digital tool to track their mental health and if so, what would they like to track.

The response to this question was suspiciously positive. I’m not sure if it’s the way we worded it or its placement in the interview, but it seemed too good to be true. Regardless, later on, we ran into a predicament that furthered our suspicion.

After performing some research, we found that there are a few mood tracking apps that already exist. We began asking interviewees if they‘ve used these apps. Most had not. When we asked why they told us that they had never heard of them.

The few people that had tried the apps told us that digital mood trackers only solved part of their problem. Yes, it kept them organized and the app provided interesting analytics, but their real limiting factor was time. Most people don’t want to take time out of their day to journal. They all stopped using the app because they had to actively input their data. They told us if we could come up with an app that passively recorded information for them, then they would consider using the platform.

Conclusion: people want a digital journal that passively records key metrics that they believe represent their mental health. I believe there is a problem here, but if we were to pursue it, then we would need to do more research.

Pivot

I feel strongly that there’s room for an improved digitalized journal; however, we stumbled upon a more pressing issue: people struggle to find the right therapist. While it’s a difficult decision to shift the scope of Thought Path, I believe this is an appropriate pivot for the following reasons:

• Therapy is an effective response to mental illness. In fact, 44.7 million Americans visited a mental health professional last year. Instead of creating a new response that would take a long time to adopt, we’ve decided to improve the current solution. This is more likely to receive immediate adoption and make a quicker impact.
• From the design thinking perspective, this pivot reduces the risk of confounding variables by removing our bias from the interview process. To clarify, when we designed the interview questions, we had a solution in mind. Regardless of our attempts to keep the solution from impacting our questions, it’s only natural that our bias slipped into the conversations. By accidentally stumbling onto this pivot, we can be confident that our conclusions were unaffected by our bias.

Three Powerful Narratives

Throughout our interviews, we heard three similar storylines. The following narratives convinced us that this problem needs to be addressed immediately.

1. The Bad Experience- The personality of a therapist matters just as much as their knowledge. This makes choosing the right mental health professional extremely difficult. Many people we spoke with tried a few consultations but ultimately gave up because they didn’t click with the professionals they visited.
2. High Barriers- There are many barriers to overcome when engaging a mental health professional. We frequently heard that people gave up when they ran into the following:

• It’s difficult to navigate the insurance jargon. Unfortunately, mental health care is costly if you visit someone outside of your plan. Many of the people we spoke with stopped pursuing help when they encountered the insurance barrier.
• People often feel uncomfortable when requesting a consultation over the phone or email.
• The pictures and descriptions of mental health professionals are often unappealing, repetitive, and dated. Worst of all, most database sites allow professionals to pay for advertising slots without filtering their credentials. (refer to the last therapist in the image below)

3. Stigma With Referrals- Unfortunately, there is still a stigma associated with mental health. We heard many stories of people who felt uncomfortable asking a friend or coworker for a referral because they felt pressure from the stigma around mental health. Most of these people never saw a professional or experienced the first narrative.

What’s next?

We’re running another interview session! This time we’d like to talk to people who are:

1. Mental Health Professionals (sign up here)
2. Someone who sees or has seen a professional (sign up here)

Your privacy is our top concern. We will never publish your name or other identifiable information. Our questions are designed to stay away from personal topics while facilitating a conversation about your experience. Our goal is to understand your experience with therapy and how it could have been improved.

In other news

Please join me in welcoming three new members to the Thought Path family. Each of them brings an impressive set of tools to the team, but their most redeemable quality comes from their desire to learn. We’re eager to see how they’ll shape the company over the next few months.