Digital Counselor/ Online Therapy

Mental Health Therapy

For several years now, British mental health services have struggled to keep up with the demand placed upon them, with some patients being placed on waiting lists of up to two years before seeing a therapist. Now, digital services like Big White Wall and a number of private counselors are bringing talking therapies into patients' homes via laptops, smartphones and tablets.

It’s an oft-parroted statistic that one in four people will experience a mental health problem each year, and one that has been confirmed by the British mental health charity Mind. These issues also appear to be getting more frequent among people with major symptoms – the proportion of people with severe symptoms of common mental disorders in a given week has risen from 6.9% in 1993 to 9.3% in 2014 in the UK.

However, mental health services also remain difficult to access, with the British Medical Association finding a startling rise in the number of patients sent outside their local area for treatment. The numbers increased by 40%, from 4,213 in 2014/15 to 5,876 in 2015/16. This included the case of one patient who was sent from Somerset to NHS Highland, a journey of 587 miles.

Enter Big White Wall. The first service of its kind to be registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), England and Wales’ health and social care regulator, Big White Wall gives patients access to a range of counselling and mental health support services via digital platforms.

Patients can speak to one of around 20 therapists of their choice through text, audio, and secure video channels, with access to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) programmes or longer-term counselling. These sessions can be booked quickly at a time to suit the individual, with no waiting lists – something of a blessing in an age where patients have been held on NHS waiting lists for traditional talking therapies for up to two years.

Big White Wall: easy access to mental health services

As well as live therapy, patients also have access to Big White Wall’s online peer support community which offers information, advice and guided support programmes on a range of common issues, and is monitored 24/7 by trained clinicians.

As highlighted by Big White Wall CEO Henry Jones, this format drastically increases the accessibility of mental health services to those who may be unable to attend traditional in-person talking therapies.

“Some patients will always want an in-person option,” Jones says. “However, we’re able to support those who don’t have access to it. We’ve helped people who simply cannot make their own way to hospital, working mothers who don’t have time between the office and the school run to attend a therapist’s office, and even a veteran who had been living in a caravan in Wales since he had come out of active service and didn’t have access to face-to-face treatment.