Nature Medicine
Image: Lieutenant Pol
Feeling down? Unmotivated? Stressed out? Talk to Sibly, the coaching platform from a San Francisco–based start-up that is “[o]n a mission to provide accessible, affordable, and effective mental health care for everyone”, according to its Twitter profile. Since 2016, the company has been helping people talk through their problems. Or rather, text through them. In place of a face-to-face conversation, Sibly offers key services through smartphone instant messaging. And in place of licensed therapists, a team of four to six nonlicensed ‘coaches’ help the client.
Mental health care services are going through a quiet revolution, fueled in part by the widely acknowledged problem of access to therapists and other licensed professionals. No one disputes that new services like Sibly are exciting and innovative. The bigger question is whether they will actually have a positive impact, or whether offering mental health care without involving licensed therapists has the potential to cause real harm.
“Is the technology being used to just reduce the quality of mental healthcare? I think that’s a concern,” says John Torous, director of the digital psychiatry division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Read more on the Nature Medicine website…
