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New Research: Talkspace Releases Early Findings that “Text Therapy” Highly Effective for Frontline Healthcare Workers at Onset of COVID-19 Pandemic
Of the healthcare workers treated by asynchronous "text therapy" in March of 2020, 601 individuals provided sufficient data with 56% reporting significantly
About this update from Talkspace, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"Of the healthcare workers treated by asynchronous \"text therapy\" in March of 2020, 601 individuals provided sufficient data with 56% reporting significantly improved symptoms for anxiety and depression in 3 weeks NEW YORK, Feb. 07, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Talkspace (Nasdaq: TALK), a leading behavioral healthcare company, released early findings of a landmark study in the delivery of asynchronous psychotherapy, which enables the ability to text with licensed therapists, during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In March of 2020, researchers from Talkspace and leading academic centers recruited healthcare workers (HCWs) from major hospitals across the United States who were experiencing anxiety or depression as they cared for COVID-19 patients during the initial surge. Participants could send unlimited text messages to their therapists and would receive counseling in the form of text messages back from their respective therapists. The population included physicians, nurses at several levels, residents in training, and a small number of nonmedical sanitation workers. Drawing on anonymized data from 601 HCWs across the United States for a relatively brief period of one month, key findings include: 56% reported clinically significant improvements in their anxiety (GAD-7) and depression (PHQ-9) symptoms.This sample was more severe at baseline than our historical user base by 5 points, reporting moderately-severe scores for both anxiety and depression on beginning treatment.The improvements shown by HCWs translated into a large effect size that puts it on par with effect sizes reported for traditional therapy. Additionally, researchers analyzed an expanded subset of subject data (N=820) by leveraging machine learning capabilities called Natural Language Processing (NLP), the ability of a computer to anonymously and securely analyze what was written. Within this subset, researchers wanted to understand more specifically what brought the participants to treatment and how HCWs were engaging with their assigned therapist through the digital app. Key findings in this controlled group include: Analyses showed that roughly half of the HCWs sought care for problems that pre-date COVID, seeing this as an opportunity to ‘finally’ begin treatment.For the other half, concerns about 1) bringing COVID home, and 2) experiencing patient deaths wer...