Teletherapy app Ayana matches users to licensed professionals based on their culture, race, and experiences. Can it help close the mental healthcare gap?
It was a cry for help that inspired entrepreneur Eric Coly to launch his startup. The former investment banker was approached by a close friend who confided to him that she needed counseling, but she couldn’t find a therapist. Or more specifically, she couldn’t find an African-American therapist. She wanted someone who could understand her experience as a woman of color.
Coly, a Senegal native diagnosed with depression, understood her frustration too well. He had also experienced the gap between the counseling needs of minorities and the availability of the services. It’s a common issue: Of the 100,000 therapists in the U.S, 86% are white, 5% Hispanic, 5% Asian, and 4% African American. Meanwhile, the American landscape looks far more diverse: The population is 62% white and 38% racial/ethnic minority, with the latter expected to grow to the majority by 2050.
“Take aside the stigmatization and the lack of access to insurance and resources, [minorities] tend to only find people whom they aren’t able to relate to quite well,” says Coly, 45. “And they essentially give up. They buy into the notion that there’s no one out there who can help them.”
The mental healthcare gap is a huge issue—and one that medical schools are trying to remedy. For minorities already marginalized in other sectors, it can feel extra cruel when such a gap looms when it comes to their therapy needs. In addition, groups such as African Americans harbor long-standing suspicions of mental health institutions, which have proven biased against their needs in the past. As such, only one in three African Americans who needs mental healthcare actually receives it, according to the American Psychiatric Association.
[To read the rest of this article by Rina Raphael, click here.]
[Photo: Dimitar Belchev/Unsplash]
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