Talkspace CEO acknowledges the low rates of usage of mental health services

From the NY Times, Kara Swisher interviews Oren Frank, the CEO of Talkspace, a therapy app that he co-founded. Talkspace is available to as a benefit to 55 million employees in the US.

Frank spoke about the difficulty of getting access to a therapist or psychiatrist and said; “Only around 40% of people that have crossed the clinical threshold receive any kind of access. And more worryingly, for the people that do have access, only about 40% of them show clinical remission rates. So it is a very broken set of professions, in the way it’s being delivered in the United States, way, way before Covid.”

Mr. Frank’s comment that this situation is “broken,” is apt. And, to quote Leonard Cohen, this brokenness “is where the light comes in.” In this case, it’s where The Company Chaplain comes in and expands the continuum of care to include emotional and spiritual support.

The Wall St. Journal speaks to another aspect of this picture–about one in four people who want mental health are seeking out clergy. Again, this speaks to the need for employees to be able to seek out spiritual care providers as part of their employee benefit package.