Covid-19 infections have only added to the sense of fear that the end is not yet in sight

6 min readNov 20, 2020

A lasting legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic will be how businesses have been forced to embrace digital technologies to replace or enhance pre-Covid-19 analog business models. Business owners as diverse as tutors, fitness trainers, skincare professionals and dog trainers who previously delivered services in person have had to confront the challenges of social distancing and restrictions on movement by providing services in a virtual setting.

The provision of mental health services is one such area, and it’s become more important than ever. Humans are creatures of habit. We take comfort in the routine and predictable. Covid-19 completely upended our normal day-to-day lives; the comfort provided by habits was suddenly taken away from us. Historic levels of unemployment and associated financial distress and a rolling wave of Covid-19 infections have only added to the sense of fear that the end is not yet in sight. Almost ten months into the pandemic, many of us find ourselves living in a state of perpetual anxiety.

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With our lives out of kilter and uncertainty over when and how life will return to normal, it’s no surprise that mental health has suffered. According to a mid-July poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 53% of adults in the U.S. stated that their mental health had been negatively impacted due to Covid-19. This number was at 32% in March.

Perhaps more concerning is the findings of a study in the Lancet Public Health that indicates a 50% decline in observed common mental health problems during the three months following the onset of the pandemic. This suggests that in addition to the 40% of adults who reported struggling with mental health, there is another large group of adults who are not yet accounted for. Mental Health America puts the figure of adults in need of mental health care who aren’t receiving treatment at 57.2%.

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Those who can access treatment can no longer do so in person. With restrictions on social distancing making it more difficult to visit a therapist or a life coach, both practitioners and clients have had to embrace digital technology to an extent that was unthinkable prior to the pandemic.

While a virtual appointment is the new norm, leveraging digital technology to deliver mental and physical care is not a 2020 idea. Long before the present crisis, health practitioners have touted the efficacy and benefits of delivering certain services through digital platforms, which might be here to stay. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reported that 1.7 million medicare beneficiaries were using telehealth services in the last week of April, which is up from 13,000 people a week prior to March.

Regulatory and insurance barriers since the onset of the pandemic have relaxed as well. For example, the guidelines for a practitioner delivering teletherapy services to a client in a different state have been changed. Furthermore, the Drug Enforcement Agency is now allowing a practitioner to prescribe drugs without a physical consultation.

Advances in digital technologies and more accommodating regulatory barriers have helped spur widespread adoption of teletherapy. However, making the transition from a traditional weekly 50-minute face-to-face session to a virtual experience is not without its challenges.

First and foremost is the concern about data privacy. Having your innermost thoughts traveling to your therapist over an IP connection is a reason for concern in a world where phishing attacks aimed at identity theft happen far too frequently. Privacy within one’s own home is another challenge. Rather than risk being overheard by a spouse or children, many clients choose to dial into sessions from the privacy of a car. That makes it essential for mental health companies to choose platforms designed for a mobile device.

For regulatory reasons, both clinicians and clients need to have confidence that the video teleconferencing technology they’re using is HIPAA compliant. The free consumer version of Skype, for example, is not, but Skype for Business, Google Meet, Zoom and others are. In addition, all teletherapy clients are required to sign an Informed Consent for Teletherapy form. Ideally, the digital platform your company uses to deliver teletherapy should accommodate the need for the delivery and digital execution of these forms.

Finally, there’s payment. With teletherapy, it needs to be easy for therapists to invoice for each session or group of sessions and for clients to pay their bills.

In other words, successfully transitioning a therapy practice from analog to digital requires a number of different solutions, and they can be complex. A simpler solution is to integrate all the communication and business functions into a single platform. The good news is that these platforms exist and are being widely adopted, making it even easier for therapists to offer teletherapy. (Full disclosure: My company offers these services, as do many others.)

For individuals seeking therapy because of the stress and anxiety caused by the pandemic and associated economic fallout, their entry into therapy was a virtual experience from day one; there was never a transition from in-person to virtual sessions. Some of the mental health professionals who use our app to support their own clients have told us that virtual delivery does not compromise the efficacy of the therapy. In fact, many clients have responded well to teletherapy and feel both safer and more comfortable.

While the pace of businesses for many service providers remains below pre-Covid-19 levels, the adoption of digital technology has proven to be a lifeline and may, in the end, provide some businesses with a more efficient service delivery model and a larger potential audience. The success of some companies moving their practices 100% online after the pandemic may tell us a lot about whether teletherapy is here to stay.

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Covid-19 infections have only added to the sense of fear that the end is not yet in sight

Written by Priyanka Bhuin(Pinky)

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