When Therapy Becomes a Consumer Product: The Cost of Venture Capital in Mental Health Care
In the last few years, the landscape of therapy has changed dramatically. Companies like Rula, Headway, Grow, Alma, BetterHelp, TalkSpace, Thriveworks, and others have poured millions into making therapy seem "easier to access.” The promise sounds good—quick matches, low costs, more options—but there’s a quieter story unfolding underneath.
As a therapist and practice owner, I’ve started to worry about what happens when mental health care becomes a business model first and a relationship... an after thought.
To be clear, I have no interest in criticizing individual therapists who contract with these companies. Many are kind, skilled, and trying to make a living in a difficult system. But it’s worth pausing to ask what happens when therapy becomes another industry for investors to scale.
When Growth Becomes the Goal
Most of these therapy platforms likely started with sincere intentions—expanding access, reducing wait times, destigmatizing care. But once venture capital entered the equation, the mission shifted. Growth became the goal, not grounded, ethical care
When investors fund mental health startups, they expect a return. That means more sign-ups, more sessions, and more data. And like any business focused on scale, quality becomes harder to protect.
The marketing tells the story: celebrity endorsements that imply they used the service (though, let’s be honest, they probably saw a private therapist), and ads that question why you’d pay $XXX for therapy when you could just use insurance—subtly devaluing the very thing they’re selling. Because the venture capitalist companies are selling a product, not providing a service.
But, therapy isn’t a product to deliver. It’s a process that unfolds. And it doesn’t fit neatly into the same growth model that sells convenience apps or subscription boxes.
How This Impacts Clients
Clients often come to these companies seeking connection, stability, and care. What they sometimes find instead is a system optimized for efficiency over relationship.
Here’s what that can look like:
Therapists ghosting or not showing up because they’re overextended or disconnected from their caseload.
High turnover, leaving clients to retell their story again and again.
Automated screenings like GAD-7 and PHQ-9 before every session—not for your benefit, but to justify billing.
An endless referral stream that can subtly shift the dynamic from “I care deeply about this client” to “there’s always another one waiting.”
Even when the therapist is caring and skilled, the system itself isn’t built to support the kind of long-term, relational work that real healing often requires.
How This Impacts Therapists
These platforms don’t just affect clients—they reshape the profession.
Therapists are often told, “You can’t make it in private practice without insurance anymore.” So they join corporate platforms believing it’s the only viable way to earn a living. That belief—while understandable—reinforces the very system that limits therapist autonomy.
What’s lost in the process?
Freedom to set boundaries, pace, and caseloads.
The ability to make thoughtful clinical decisions without algorithmic or insurance interference.
A sense of ownership and identity. When you’re one of thousands under a corporate umbrella, your name and values fade into the background.
The message to therapists becomes: “You’re replaceable.” And that message is as harmful to therapists as it is to clients.
What We Lose When We Give Up Therapist Ownership
Therapist-owned practices—solo or group—are one of the backbones of meaningful mental health care. They create space for specialized, culturally responsive, deeply attuned therapy.
When therapists can build practices aligned with their values, they can offer true diversity in care. One practice might focus on trauma and dissociation. Another might center first-generation clients or survivors of spiritual abuse. This kind of nuance doesn’t come from a growth metric—it comes from freedom.
Economically, the distinction matters too: When you pay for therapy at a therapist-owned practice, your money stays local. It supports continuing education, supervision, community workshops, and—importantly—sustainability, rest, and family life. When you pay a VC-owned company, your money often goes toward ad campaigns, executive bonuses, and insurance companies—not just the people doing the work.
A Better Way Forward
Private pay therapy isn’t the easy route—for clients or for therapists. It requires commitment, investment, and courage to step outside of insurance systems and corporate promises. But it’s also what keeps therapy human.
Many therapist-owned groups and practices offer superbills, sliding scales, or consultation calls to help bridge the gap between accessibility and autonomy. And increasingly, group practice owners are offering business consulting, training, and mentorship to help other therapists build sustainable practices.
When therapists own their work, they show up differently. There’s buy-in. There’s accountability. There’s pride. When your name is on the door, you care in a different way than when you’re working behind the anonymity of a corporate platform.
Because when therapy belongs to therapists, not investors, the goal shifts back to attuned treatment and healing.
The Bottom Line
Corporate therapy companies have changed access—but not always for the better. They’ve made therapy easier to find, but harder to feel seen within.
As both clients and clinicians, we have the power to choose what kind of system we want to sustain. Every time we invest in therapist-owned care, we’re choosing presence over profit, relationship over reach, and depth over scale.
And that's how we keep therapy rooted in what it was meant to be: helping people heal, grow, and reconnect to themselves and others .