4 ms·

I had some troubles with an employee of mine in the past and think he would have benefitted from a shrink (I suspect he was heavily depressed), but as the boss

I had some troubles with an employee of mine in the past and think he would have benefitted from a shrink (I suspect he was heavily depressed), but as the boss, I found it complicated to do that for various reasons: 1) conflict of interest 2) free will of the patient to go there 3) we're bordering on medical territory and it's a minefield for a company. There is no happy ending, I left the company without having acted on it and the employee left recently, but as far as I know he's living erratically and unemployed now.

VLM 12y ago
Sounds like a stereotypical startup opportunity, a problem exists, hard to solve, outsource the minefield to a TaaS (therapy as a service) provider to rake in some corporate contract money. I don't think its totally out of class as a startup idea, fundamentally you've got a matchmaking service (more or less) and a scheduling system and a billing system and maybe do it online in video conference or something. How to monetize is not entirely clear. I guess you could bill the company one full "screening" therapy hour per year living off the skim of not every employee using the entire hour and most people having a mandatory ten minute talk along the lines of "all is well" annually or whatever while some people end up taking the whole hour (or more?). This is probably not the only possible business model and probably not the only monetization model but it is the first one I thought of. I used dental services as a model for my theoretical therapy model, hang out on a regular basis with the dentist for a short appointment and most of the time he has very little to do for most of the people, but he can schedule a follow up for real work or a referral if the checkup finds a problem. I suppose there would be interesting conflict of interest issues where the insurance company paying the therapy bills would probably prefer more unhealthy untreated people for financial reasons so they'd actively discourage hiring a company-wide screening service like this. Or, if it can be proven numerically that early diagnosis saves treatment dollars, I think we have an obvious endgame strategy of being bought out by a (mental) health insurance company. Like most startups the idea is free and not worth much, it'll all be in the execution. It would be interesting to research the competition, the successes, and the failures. It seems like an obvious idea, the past must be full of failures in this field?
- DanBC 12y ago
  > Sounds like a stereotypical startup opportunity, a problem exists, hard to solve, outsource the minefield to a TaaS (therapy as a service) provider to rake in some corporate contract money. > It seems like an obvious idea, the past must be full of failures in this field? There are very many providers of this kind of therapy. Relevant search terms are combinations of "occupational health" and "talking therapy" (but "occupational therapy" is something different). Here's one of the first hits in Google: http://www.prohms.com/mental_health_wellbeing http://www.prohms.com/mental_health_wellbeing (Their site feels a bit American to me; the US road sign, the rod of Asclepius; but they're in the UK). Here's another one providing services to different large orgs: http://www.atriumclinic.co.uk/about-us/what-we-do http://www.atriumclinic.co.uk/about-us/what-we-do This easy to understand document a out talking therapies in England has a single mention of therapy provided at work but does have lots more information about how to chose a therapist and how to access them etc. http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/content/assets/PDF/publications/talking_therapies_explained.pdf?view=Standard http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/content/assets/PDF/publicatio... Here's a personal story of terrible waits and delays one person had in late 2013. This treatment is clearly unacceptable. http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/your-stories/fighting-to-access-talking-therapy/#.VUb_DGKCPTp http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/your-stories/figh... I wish I could say things are better. For most people things are better. IAPT did improve things; GPs have more awareness; there's more capacity. So for short form first line talking therapies like CBT things are better (but there are still some very bad services around). Things are different for longer form heavy duty talking therapies. These traditionally have very long wait times - years in some cases. People should have to wait a maximum of 18 weeks for this long form therapy.

VLM 12y ago

Sounds like a stereotypical startup opportunity, a problem exists, hard to solve, outsource the minefield to a TaaS (therapy as a service) provider to rake in some corporate contract money. I don't think its totally out of class as a startup idea, fundamentally you've got a matchmaking service (more or less) and a scheduling system and a billing system and maybe do it online in video conference or something. How to monetize is not entirely clear. I guess you could bill the company one full "screening" therapy hour per year living off the skim of not every employee using the entire hour and most people having a mandatory ten minute talk along the lines of "all is well" annually or whatever while some people end up taking the whole hour (or more?). This is probably not the only possible business model and probably not the only monetization model but it is the first one I thought of. I used dental services as a model for my theoretical therapy model, hang out on a regular basis with the dentist for a short appointment and most of the time he has very little to do for most of the people, but he can schedule a follow up for real work or a referral if the checkup finds a problem. I suppose there would be interesting conflict of interest issues where the insurance company paying the therapy bills would probably prefer more unhealthy untreated people for financial reasons so they'd actively discourage hiring a company-wide screening service like this. Or, if it can be proven numerically that early diagnosis saves treatment dollars, I think we have an obvious endgame strategy of being bought out by a (mental) health insurance company. Like most startups the idea is free and not worth much, it'll all be in the execution. It would be interesting to research the competition, the successes, and the failures. It seems like an obvious idea, the past must be full of failures in this field?

DanBC 12y ago
> Sounds like a stereotypical startup opportunity, a problem exists, hard to solve, outsource the minefield to a TaaS (therapy as a service) provider to rake in some corporate contract money. > It seems like an obvious idea, the past must be full of failures in this field? There are very many providers of this kind of therapy. Relevant search terms are combinations of "occupational health" and "talking therapy" (but "occupational therapy" is something different). Here's one of the first hits in Google: http://www.prohms.com/mental_health_wellbeing http://www.prohms.com/mental_health_wellbeing (Their site feels a bit American to me; the US road sign, the rod of Asclepius; but they're in the UK). Here's another one providing services to different large orgs: http://www.atriumclinic.co.uk/about-us/what-we-do http://www.atriumclinic.co.uk/about-us/what-we-do This easy to understand document a out talking therapies in England has a single mention of therapy provided at work but does have lots more information about how to chose a therapist and how to access them etc. http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/content/assets/PDF/publications/talking_therapies_explained.pdf?view=Standard http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/content/assets/PDF/publicatio... Here's a personal story of terrible waits and delays one person had in late 2013. This treatment is clearly unacceptable. http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/your-stories/fighting-to-access-talking-therapy/#.VUb_DGKCPTp http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/your-stories/figh... I wish I could say things are better. For most people things are better. IAPT did improve things; GPs have more awareness; there's more capacity. So for short form first line talking therapies like CBT things are better (but there are still some very bad services around). Things are different for longer form heavy duty talking therapies. These traditionally have very long wait times - years in some cases. People should have to wait a maximum of 18 weeks for this long form therapy.