‘Get on Board or Get Off’: Nosediving Job Quality for Mental Health Providers in the Age of Platform Work

Abstract

This article situates teletherapy platforms within the context of digital labour platforms. It explores commonalities including workers’ employment status, worker autonomy and platform control, user recruitment practices and working time flexibility to show how teletherapy platforms have adopted the platform business model to mental health care. Presenting a first-person account from Nelly, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and social worker based in a large city in the Northeastern United States, the article reveals how teletherapy platforms erode work quality and increase precarity. While Nelly’s experience ends in a successful unionisation campaign, it also warns of the innate tensions between startup culture and the conditions that foster quality mental health care.