Technology Archives - Psychotherapy Notes

Are therapy referrals down? 3 possible explanations (with solutions)

September 16, 2025 by Ben Caldwell

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.

How human therapists can thrive in a world of AI-based therapy

August 19, 2024 by Ben Caldwell

In the previous two articles on AI-based therapy, I’ve detailed why AI therapists are poised to transform the mental health care industry and why many clients will prefer AI therapists over human ones. Here, we’ll look at how human therapists can remain indispensable as cheap, AI-based therapy becomes widely available.

An AI therapist can’t really do therapy. Many clients will choose it anyway.

August 19, 2024August 15, 2024 by Ben Caldwell

Woman working on laptop in an apartment window / Photo by Matthew Henry via Burst / Used under license It just isn’t the same, I hear over and over, from psychotherapists shrugging away concern over artificial intelligence. An AI therapist can’t really empathize. It can’t truly understand. It can’t build a therapeutic relationship with depth and connectedness the way a human therapist can.

As a therapist myself, I agree with all of these statements. An AI therapist is not equivalent to a human therapist. Like many therapists, I tend to focus on the ways that AI falls short.

But for clients, in many ways, an AI therapist is better than a human one.

AI therapy is about to make therapy a lot cheaper

August 19, 2024August 14, 2024 by Ben Caldwell

Hands on laptop / Photo by Matthew Henry via Burst / Used under license “I’m in L.A. We have a lot of therapists,” Angelle Haney Gullett told the Washington Post in 2022. “So it’s just kind of wild to me that that many people are at capacity.” She had contacted 25 different therapists after her father passed away, knowing that she needed help. Even though she was willing to pay cash, not one would take her. No one would even put her on a waiting list.

She’s not alone. Tens of thousands of Americans struggle to access mental health care even when they know they need it, and even when their health insurance covers it. But for clients like Angelle, mental health care is about to get much easier to access. It’s about to get a lot less expensive, too. This will happen thanks to artificial intelligence. AI therapy is already here, and it’s about to upend US mental health care.

BetterHelp is losing a lot of subscribers

March 7, 2024 by Ben Caldwell

Person using laptop. Thought Catalog via Burst, used under license Online therapy platform BetterHelp is rapidly losing its paid subscriber base, according to financial filings from its parent company. The company reports a drop in average monthly paid BetterHelp subscribers, from 476,000 in the second quarter of 2023 to 425,000 in the fourth quarter. That’s a loss of more than 10% of its paid user base, despite significant marketing expenses aimed at growing the platform.