On June 17 the Going Digital: Behavioral Health Tech summit featured more than 50 speakers and 18+ hours of content spread across three tracks.
Alyson Friedensohn, founder and CEO of Modern Health sat down with Chris Hoyd, Vynyl’s director of product management to talk about mental health and the importance of meeting employees where they are.
Alyson described growing up with parents who were doctors, and always understanding the value of preventative care. After moving to San Francisco and suffering a series of personal and professional setbacks within the first two weeks, she was forced to ask herself, “Why am I here and why did I just do this?”
During what she calls “a complete disaster,” Modern Health was born. Alyson says, “I saw this huge unmet need in the mental health space to build a more holistic and preventative solution—not just waiting until people are in crisis mode.”
Alyson described many of the kinds of stressors people are experiencing, including everything from dealing with work stress and personal relationships to more serious concerns. “Whether it’s a pandemic, or whether it’s the racial injustice that we’re seeing, all these things…put people at higher risk for severe depression, anxiety, and stress. Giving them the tools to engage in their own mental health, that was the idea behind Modern Health.”
Modern Health’s three-pronged approach provides users digital resources and tools for self-paced exploration, virtual coaching, and access to virtual or in-person therapy. This allows them to address a wider range of user needs than traditional mental healthcare coverage, which often focuses on referring people to therapists.
She also addressed the ways that technology is affecting our well-being, noting that social media and our always-on work lives have changed the ways and the rate at which humans need to process information and emotions. Alyson notes that while humans have looked more or less the same for thousands of years, the rate that technology has evolved around us is increasing. “Pretty quickly overnight we went from being tethered to technology, but also having to deal with the feelings of going through sadness, jealousy, happiness in 30 seconds by looking at social media applications that we have on our phones. We as humans haven’t created the new neural pathways to be resilient to these stresses that we deal with every day.”
To see the rest of the conversation, check out the Behavioral Health Tech video library.
Thank you Cognific for creating this first-of-its-kind event and engaging Vynyl to co-organize it!