Therapy Tech

"Therapy Tech is a spirited, contrarian take on the idea that technology can solve or mitigate the U.S. mental health care crisis. Emma Bedor Hiland convincingly argues that smartphone wellness apps, telemedicine, and therapeutic chatbots will not cure the structural inequalities of the healthcare system; moreover, these mental health technologies carry insidious neoliberal baggage. A thought-provoking, critical exploration into the cultural life of modern mental health technologies."—Elizabeth J. Donaldson, author of Literatures of Madness: Disability Studies and Mental Health

"Clear, concise, and accessible, Therapy Tech wades into the massive digital mental healthcare industry, providing readers with front-line reporting on the most recent episode in America’s long history of health-related consumerism. Emma Bedor Hiland shows that increased development of products and platforms—what she calls ‘technological solutionism’—does not improve access to mental healthcare for historically marginalized and under-resourced poor, rural, and racialized communities, and, if unchecked, will result in intensified forms of ‘psychosurveillance.’"—Michael Rembis, director, Center for Disability Studies, University at Buffalo

A pointed look at the state of tech-based mental healthcare and what we must do to change it
 

Proponents of technology trumpet it as the solution to the massive increase in the mental distress that confronts our nation. They herald the arrival of algorithms, intelligent chatbots, smartphone applications, telemental healthcare services, and more—but are these technological fixes really as good as they seem? In Therapy Tech, Emma Bedor Hiland presents the first comprehensive study of how technology has transformed mental healthcare, showing that this revolution can’t deliver what it promises.

Far from providing a solution, technological mental healthcare perpetuates preexisting disparities while relying on the same failed focus on personal responsibility that has let us down before. Through vivid, in-depth case studies, Therapy Tech reveals these problems, covering issues including psychosurveillance on websites like Facebook and 7 Cups of Tea, shortcomings of popular AI “doctors on demand” like Woebot, Wysa, and Joy, and even how therapists are being conscripted into the gig economy.

Featuring a vital coda that brings Therapy Tech up to date for the COVID era, this book is the first to give readers a large-scale analysis of mental health technologies and the cultural changes they have enabled. Both a sobering dissection of the current state of mental health and a necessary warning of where things are headed, Therapy Tech makes an important assertion about how to help those in need of mental health services today.

Emma Bedor Hiland is an instructor in the School of Communication Studies at James Madison University. Her research has been published in Feminist Media Studies, Screen Bodies, and Sexuality & Culture.

Contents

Introduction: Pursuing a Technological Fix

1. Mental Wellness by Smartphone App

2. Psychosurveillance

3. Chatbots and Therapeutic AI

4. Telemental Healthcare

5. The Future of Mental Health Technologies

COVID Coda

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index