For a field with long, unpredictable hours alongside constant exposure to human suffering, the healthcare industry does not often have mental resources readily accessible for its workers.
In March of 2020, Talkspace offered asynchronous text therapy to over 600 healthcare workers from a variety of hospitals across the country, and the results are in. Within three weeks, 56% reported improved symptoms for anxiety and depression.
Participants, which included residents in training, nurses, physicians, and nonmedical sanitation workers, could send unlimited text messages 24/7 to their Talkspace therapist and receive help in return.
Read more:
"As a physician for 20 years, I know convenience and availability is a really important issue relative to how healthcare workers run their lives," says Jon Cohen, who began his career as a vascular surgeon and is now the CEO of Talkspace. "Taking time off or finding time after work is hard. Carrying a phone around is just much more accessible than doing [therapy] the traditional way."
In fact, the data suggests that healthcare workers would send their therapist messages at the hospital, possibly in the break room or between patient rounds. Most of the messages used present tense verbs like "am crying" or "is dying", hinting at the need for workers to discuss a traumatic event shortly after it happened. While traditional therapy doesn't allow patients to have an immediate outlet to voice their feelings, text therapy does, underlines Cohen.
Thomas Derrick Hull, clinical psychologist and research director at Talkspace, also points out that over half of the participants received mental health treatment before, but were not undergoing treatment when Talkspace reached out. This suggests healthcare workers wanted help but didn't know where to turn.
Read more:
"They had needs, but could not continue to pursue treatment, especially during COVID when a lot of people were working overtime," says Hull. "It seems asynchronous messaging made it easier."
Even before the pandemic, many healthcare workers struggled with burnout, depression and anxiety — but COVID-19 took these feelings to a whole new level. According to a 2020 Mental Health America survey, 86% of healthcare workers reported experiencing anxiety and 76% reported feeling exhausted and burned out.
"We would probably all agree that the anxiety level has been very high since COVID," says Cohen. "But for healthcare workers it is even more stressful and anxiety provoking, especially when we didn't know what COVID meant and what needed to be done to protect ourselves and our families."
Read more:
Three years later, while scientists and medical experts know more about COVID, it's still driving waves of limited hospital capacity and remains the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S. Cohen is hopeful that Talkspace's data encourages hospitals to provide non-traditional mental health resources to their workers. And in the wake of an industry-wide labor shortage, mental health help could give workers a way to combat burnout and a reason to stay, he says.
"We're seeing a continued significant interest in therapy for employees from employers," says Cohen. "Certainly healthcare organizations are now not only interested in the data, but in increasing the availability of therapy."
