More Mental Health Advertising, Less Mental Health Stigma?

The beginnings of virtual mental health service delivery can be traced to 1986 and Cornell University’s Dear Uncle Ezra, a question and answer forum on mental health issues. Some credit the origins to David Sommers who, in 1995, started a fee-based service using emails and real-time chats to provide one-on-one therapy (see The History of Online Therapy). In the 2000s, we saw a proliferation of telehealth companies—Teladoc in 2002, Amwell in 2006, and MDLive in 2009. Followed by mental health specialty platforms like Ginger in 2011, Talkspace in 2012, BetterHelp in 2013, Quartet Health . . .