When Carolina Escudero was severely depressed, going to a therapist’s office

became hard to face. So she joined BetterHelp, a popular therapy app. She paid $65
each week but spent most of her time waiting for her assigned counsellor to respond.
She got two responses in a month. “It was like texting an acquaintance who has no
idea how to deal with mental illness,” she says. BetterHelp says its service does not
claim to operate around the clock, all its therapists have advanced degrees and
“thousands of hours of hands-on clinical work”, and users are able easily to switch
them if scheduling is hard.
Helping people to deal with mental problems has rarely been more urgent. The
incidence of depression and anxiety has soared in the pandemic—by more than 25%
globally in 2020, according to the Lancet, a medical journal. That, combined with
more people using online services, has led to a boom in mental-health apps. The
American Psychological Association reckons 10,000-20,000 are available for
download. But evidence is mounting that privacy risks to users are being ignored. No
one is checking if the apps work, either.
Mental-health-tech firms raised nearly $2bn in equity funding in 2020, according to
cb Insights, a data firm. Their products tackle problems from general stress to serious
bipolar disorder. Telehealth apps like BetterHelp or Talkspace connect users to
licensed therapists. Also common are subscription-based meditation apps like
Headspace. In October Headspace bought Ginger, a therapy app, for $3bn. Now that
big companies are prioritising employees’ mental health, some apps are working with
them to help entire workforces. One such app, Lyra, supports 2.2m employee users
globally and is valued at $4.6bn.
Underneath, though, a trauma lurks in some corners of the industry. In October 2020
hackers who had breached Vastaamo, a popular Finnish startup, began blackmailing
some of its users. Vastaamo required therapists to back up patient notes online but
reportedly did not anonymise or encrypt them. Threatening to share details of
extramarital affairs and, in some cases, thoughts about pedophilia, on the dark web,
the hackers reportedly demanded bitcoin ransoms from some 30,000 patients.
Vastaamo has filed for bankruptcy but left many Finns wary of telling doctors
personal details, says Joni Siikavirta, a lawyer representing the company’s patients.
Other cases may arise. No universal standards for storing “emotional data” exist.
John Torous of Harvard Medical School, who has reviewed 650 mental-health apps,
describes their privacy policies as abysmal. Some share information with advertisers.
“When I first joined BetterHelp, I started to see targeted ads with words that I had
used on the app to describe my personal experiences,” reports one user. BetterHelp
says it shares with marketing partners only device identifiers associated with “generic
event names”, only for measurement and optimisation, and only if users agree. No
private information, such as dialogue with therapists, is shared, it says.
As for effectiveness, the apps’ methods are notoriously difficult to evaluate. Woebot,
for instance, is a chatbot which uses artificial intelligence to reproduce the experience
of cognitive behavioural therapy. The product is marketed as clinically validated
based in part on a scientific study which concluded that humans can form meaningful
bonds with bots. But the study was written by people with financial links to Woebot.
Of its ten peer-reviewed reports to date, says Woebot, eight feature partnerships with
a main investigator with no financial ties to it. Any co-authors with financial ties are
disclosed, it says.
Mental-health apps were designed to be used in addition to clinical care, not in lieu of
them. With that in mind, the European Commission is reviewing the field. It is
getting ready to promote a new standard that will apply to all health apps. A letter-
based scale will rank safety, user friendliness and data security. Liz Ashall-Payne,
founder of orcha, a British startup that has reviewed thousands of apps, including for
the National Health Service, says that 68% did not meet the firm’s quality criteria.
Time to head back to the couch?

1. “The Economist”, Psyber Boom “Dramatic growth in mental-health apps has

created a risky industry”, 11 December 2021.
2. Публицистический
3. Информационно- аналитический
4. Статья
5. Стилистически маркированные единицы на морфологическом уровне:
6. 1) сложные и сложнопроизводные слова : bipolar, telehealth, subscription-
based, headspace, workforces, startup, blackmailing, encrypt, extramarital, arise,
abysmal, peer-reviewed, partnership,co-authors, disclosed, letter- based, peer-
reviewed.
7. 2) неологизмы: subscription-based, mental-health-tech firms,woebot
6. Стилистически маркированные единицы на лексическом уровне.
1) Общественно- политическая лексика: counselor, equity funding, employees,
promote, companies, hackers, bitcoin, bankruptcy, lawyer, privacy policies,
advertisers, marketing partners, optimization, chatbot, artificial intelligence,
financial links, financial ties, founder, quality criteria, targeted ads.
2) Термины: therapist, depression, bipolar disorder, meditation, pedophilia,
cognitive behavioral therapy, clinically validated
3) Экспрессивная и оценочная лексика: hard to face, soared, boom, mounting,
breached, back up, head back to, bonds.
4) Идиомы: in lieu of
7. Стилистически маркированные единицы на синтаксическом уровне:
1) ссылка на источник информации: “BetterHelp says…”, “The American
Psychological Association reckons…,”John Touros…describes…”, “The
European Commission is reviewing…”, “Liz Ashall- Payn… says that…”,
“according to: the Lancet”,” according to cb Insights”
2) Прямая речь: “It was like texting an acquaintance who has no idea how to deal
with mental illness,” she says; “When I first joined BetterHelp, I started to see
targeted ads with words that I had used on the app to describe my personal
experiences,” reports one user
3) Риторический вопрос: Time to get back to the couch?
4) Средства выражения логической связи между частями информации: So,
though, for instance.

8. Выразительные средства и стилистические приемы: to operate around the

clock, thousands of hours of clinical work, tackle problems, trauma lurks, “emotional
data”, notoriously difficult evaluate.

8. Вывод о стилевой принадлежности текста.

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