Are fewer people seeking out therapy? Good nationwide data is hard to come by, but we have some signals. Online therapy provider BetterHelp reports a dwindling subscriber base, down about 20% from its peak two years ago, even as they continue to spend millions of dollars on advertising. And anecdotally, we’re hearing lots of individual therapists report that they’re struggling to bring in new clients over the last few months.
If your practice has been struggling with fewer therapy referrals, here are three possible reasons for it – and solutions for each.
I’ve been reading and enjoying 
In 2022, 
New evidence shows that the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) misinformed examinees about recent exam format changes. They then quietly updated their exam handbook two weeks after the changes had taken effect. Even if examinees had been correctly informed, the format changes appear to violate testing industry standards.
Discussions about value-based care among therapists are often confusing and unproductive. In my experience, that seems to be because a lot of us simply don’t know what the term means. So it gets either dismissed as just a new term for things many of us already do (like measuring outcomes), or it gets framed as the boogeyman intent on destroying therapy as we know it.