Kip (YC W16) is using data to make therapy better for patients and therapists
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
This makes it sound more like life coaching or therapy for episodic mental health problems than for people who deal with chronic mental illness. It's hard to tell how much of this is the article author's voice and how much of it stems from the way the service is structured and marketed.
This isn't necessarily bad - people suffering minor or acute depression need help too and if this improves their outcomes at lower cost then that's a wonderful thing. But since it is profit-driven, there's a natural economic incentive to orient it around the needs of the easiest customers to deal with, rather than the ones with the most severe problems, for whom outcomes are much harder to optimize: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4219058/#__sec2...
A therapist usually assigns these surveys every week or every other week. The surveys have questions such as, "Rate how much the statement applied to you over the past week: I found it hard to wind down." or "I felt I wasn't worth much as a person.' And then your answers contribute to a 'score' for whatever the survey is measuring (e.g. level of anxiety). You can google any of the form names to see the full question list–the ones we use are open source.
As an example, DASS-21 measures stress, anxiety, and depression levels in a individual at a scale of 0-34. Let's say that in the beginning of treatment, a client measures at 18-16-30 (18 depression, 16 anxiety, 30 stress). Overtime, you'd want to see a reduction in those scores.
Research shows that routinely tracking outcomes with measures like these leads to better outcomes but most therapists don't do it! This is one thing we're trying to change at Kip.
Here are some good articles on why using standard measures to track outcomes makes care more effective:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4910387/
https://www.thekennedyforum.org/news/measurement-based-care-...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/what-yo... ( linked to it in an earlier response)
At Kip, we truly believe that therapy is for everyone. Therapy is a scientifically proven process that improves how your mind works. There are many ways to change how you think, feel, and act but therapy is usually the quickest, most effective, safest route to do it. It's really helpful for people who are dealing with moderate or episodic anxiety or depression. But it’s also a critical tool for someone who is dealing with a severe or chronic conditions like treatment resistant depression. We see both kinds of clients at Kip.
One of our goals at Kip is to erode stigma around mental health issues big and small. According to the NIMH, it takes the average person suffering a mental illness over 10 years to seek help. Our hope is that by making therapy more approachable, more people will seek treatment sooner. And more people getting treatment and more awareness means we can develop better treatments in the future.
Improving access to therapy is a positive thing. That's relevant in particular ways to our community. Startups are hard. If you think you might benefit from talking to a therapist, you should try it.
One of the interesting things that Kip solves is discovery: it seems like they have a roster of prequalified therapists who follow evidence-based strategies. That's pretty interesting – the basic process of finding a qualified therapist who's a good fit via the usual methods (Google, asking people) isn't easy.
There was a really cool article in the Atlantic a couple weeks about why outcomes data is so crucial to making therapy more effective. It mentions an study where they used outcomes data to see which therapists treated clients more effectively: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/what-yo...
We are always looking for more great therapists to join Kip and they can do so on the website.
As as side note, you shouldn't have the "What Kip partners are saying" with only one person, and that person being someone that has Kip as her employer on linkedin. But not as a therapist but as a "Chief Clinical Officer" AKA chances are she does not see clients directly...
Is $165/session competitive with what one would pay outside of Kip ? Seems too high to me, though I don't stay in US.
What you guys think about getting therapists over skype from India ? It would be a lot cheaper for sure, if it works.