Launch HN: Daybreak Health (YC S20) – Online counseling designed for teens
I'm Alex, one of the cofounders of Daybreak Health (www.daybreakhealth.com) along with Luke and Sid. We help teens feel better, build skills for life and achieve their goals through online counseling. Our licensed counselors provide evidence-based counseling to teens through online video sessions, messaging, and a mobile app.

The evidence supports that behavioral therapy like CBT and DBT is effective. It works to treat diagnosable conditions like anxiety and depression, and it also works to help young people feel happier and achieve their goals [1][2][3][4][5]. But too often teens don't get the mental health support they need because it is stigmatized, difficult to schedule and attend, and expensive. At Daybreak we bring counseling to the teen on a digital device and we charge less than half the cost of a traditional therapy session.

In October of 2018, my younger brother nearly lost his life due to the lack of accessible mental health resources supporting our young people. He is not alone. 1 in 5 teens struggle with a diagnosable mental health condition, but estimates suggest that up to 1 in 3 actually struggle with anxiety - or between 6 and 10M total teens [6][7]. That means the odds are greater than 50% that if you are the average parent raising a family in America with 2 kids, one of your children will struggle with a mental health condition in their teens.

To make matters worse, 80% of teens who need mental health support do not receive care today [8]. This results in deteriorating academic performance, increased rates of juvenile crime and substance abuse, and suicide rates that are at an all-time high. Every day, 17 young people commit suicide in the US. It is the #2 cause of death among 15-24 year olds, after accidental injury and ahead of homicide [9]. This isn't a niche problem.

Our current system makes mental health support nearly impossible to get for a teen. Stigma makes it hard to admit to yourself you want support, let alone talk about it with your parents. There is a shortage of therapists who specialize in adolescents, making it hard to find a therapist that is close enough to drive to on a weekly basis. Private practice therapy averages more than $200 per session. Even if you could afford to pay, you're going to be met with 2-3 month wait lists. And when you finally do arrive, you sit on an awkward couch in an environment that you may not be comfortable in. That is why an average of 11 years pass between when a teenager first needs mental health support and when they eventually start receiving it in their 20s or even later [10].

That is why we started Daybreak Health. Everything we’ve built is designed intentionally for teens and their parents. Teens can download the Daybreak mobile app and are instantly connected to a live guide (Mon-Fri 7am-7pm) who asks about mental health goals and needs. After a video assessment where we loop in the parent, we create a plan and match teens with a counselor based on goals, needs, interests, hobbies and more. Once matched with a counselor, teens meet with them once a week through a 50-minute video call, and can message them on a daily basis through the app. Our counselors help teens develop emotional life skills and work towards goals in a personalized plan that has thematic focus on teen-specific areas like school, healthy relationships and more. Teens can also meet with small moderated groups of other teens on those same topics. And parents are a core part of the process, starting with the assessment, through planning and regular progress reports. For all of this we charge an $89/week subscription, less than half the price of a single 50-minute session in traditional private practice.

Dr. Neha Chaudhary, our lead Clinical Advisor, is a foremost expert on adolescent mental health and co-founder of Stanford's Lab for Mental Health Innovation. Together with her and experts from UCSF we have designed a program for teens grounded in clinical science, while at the same time reimagining the way it is delivered to teens. The core of our clinical program is rooted in evidence-based methods like DBT and CBT, but we have taken these approaches and brought them into an easily digestible online experience.

But there is a problem: stigma around mental health stops people from sharing their great experiences with counseling, so its benefit is under-appreciated. If you know any parent or teens who might benefit from counseling, make sure they know about its benefits. And if you have thoughts about how to solve the awareness problem, or any stories you can share that may help us better understand the needs of teens and parents, we would be grateful. Thank you!

Sources:

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00057...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3073681/

[3] https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475...

[4] https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/camh.1...

[5] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0963823060118209...

[6] https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/access.html#ref

[7] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disor...

[8] https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/access.html#ref

[9] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml

[10] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361014/

Visit us at www.daybreakhealth.com