The Rise of Fast Food Mental Health Care By: Janet Li

Janet Li
Mar 21
4 min read

Updated: Apr 6

patient on a video call with professional

In an increasingly digitized world, almost anything can be done by the press of a button, making education, work, and activities such as shopping more accessible and convenient. The digital age is also characterized by the ability to connect with individuals across the world within seconds; however, screens have increased feelings of loneliness among youth, making quality mental health services especially important in the current era.

Recently, the convenience of the internet has enabled the rise of telehealth, healthcare services that are accessed remotely through the internet. While this has encouraged visits from those unable to do checkups in person, it has also led to the increase of large mental health and telehealth companies that focus solely on revenue rather than quality, personalized care. In this blog, we’ll explore characteristics of harmful telehealth services that prevent quality psychiatry care to patients.

Background

High demand due to increased feelings of isolation and open conversations about mental health along with developments in the digital world, such as AI, has rendered the mental health sector a “good investment”. As a result, there has been a rise in private investors funding high-growth mental health startups in exchange for minority ownership rights, leading to the creation of venture capital mental health companies.

Many of these companies focus on creating digital products, such as online psychiatry and mental health apps. The focus on digitization stems from the desire to maximize engagement and increase the number of customers in order to get a quick return on investment. There are currently over 10,000 mental health apps available to users. While digital mental health resources increase access to mental health care, they fail to adequately address the concerns of patients for reasons we will be discussing next.

Short Visits

Mental health apps and websites frequently feature video or call-based therapy sessions. While telehealth offers quicker, more convenient scheduling, the length of appointments is also significantly shorter compared to in-person visits. Online therapy visits as short as 20 minutes are not uncommon, showing a large decrease from the traditional 60 minute in-person visits. This is especially concerning considering that patients have been prescribed medicine after these excessively short sessions.

The length of a visit is particularly important when addressing mental health needs, because the patient often needs time to detail and process emotions while the provider asks questions to better understand the patient’s situation and current needs. The short sessions characterizing current online mental health services prevent a full connection between the provider and the patient, hindering the provider’s ability to address the patient’s concerns since they do not have the time necessary to adequately understand the patient. Because of this, rushed visits have led to low patient satisfaction.

Low Retention Rates

Low satisfaction rates have led to many users quitting online mental health services very soon after starting it, evident in the low retention rates in mental health apps. A 2019 study confirms this, finding that only 3.9% of users continued using a mental health app after 15 days. In other words, the focus on fast therapy services has backfired. Good mental health can not be promoted in one day. Consistency through follow-up visits is necessary to encourage the use of healthy habits and resolve underlying issues, but profit-driven companies discourage this by focusing on “fast food” care rather than quality resources. In fact, rushed visits may be a sign that a patient’s mental health treatment isn’t working. As a result, online mental health apps often provide a level of care significantly lower than in-person visits with professional doctors.

High Patient Volume

Shorter appointments are profitable for companies, because they enable management to fit in more patients in a provider’s already-packed schedule. While these companies gain revenue from the increased customer base, they fail to provide necessary support to providers. As such, the high patient volume has encouraged provider fatigue and burnout, further decreasing the level of care a patient receives. At the same time, providers feel unsatisfied and are prone to resigning.

Algorithm-based Prescribing

Mental health apps are increasingly incorporating AI algorithms into their services, used either on its own or to recommend diagnoses and prescriptions to telehealth doctors. While this may alleviate the burden on providers, algorithm-based care has also led to reports of overprescribing and misdiagnoses. This has been observed in popular mental health apps such as Cerebral, leading to more health issues. Not only that, the treatment of mental health is affected by so many nuanced factors that it cannot be based on a generalized key. Even when patients have similar diagnoses, individualized treatment is necessary, because no patient has the same experiences or lifestyle as another patient. Personalized plans optimize mental health, while algorithm-based prescribing featured in mental health apps do not.

Takeaways

Online mental health services and telehealth can be a powerful tool when used in addition to in-person sessions, but a study from the George Mason University Health Administration reveals that it is being used as a substitute for in-person appointments, rather than supplementing them. While some organizations expand online services to increase accessibility, because many telehealth companies are driven by profit, they provide fast low-quality care that fails to address mental health needs. In other words, the problem isn’t the concept of telehealth, it’s the business model that popularized it.