The Mental Healthcare Consumer Journey

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Stewart Gandolf

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another podcast. This is the second in the series of a couple of or three podcasts we are creating off of material that Kathy and I have shared in recent conferences.

we’re back feeling and looking at a little sleepy people.

Kathy Gaughran

Just me.

Stewart Gandolf

But back speaking at conferences, a lot of the stuff we talked to, we’ve been encouraged to ask that we spent a lot of time preparing for these meetings.

A lot of stuff we covered, even though it may have been about mental health or may have been about addiction or senior living, applies to a bright variety of our listeners and readers.

So, today we’re going to cover a topic that Kathy discovered, the Mental Health Marketing Conference, right Kathy?

Kathy Gaughran Yeah, that’s right.

Stewart Gandolf

This was Kathy’s show, she’ll be reading most of the talk in a day. And the topic is talking about patient experience and mental health, lovely.

we’re going to be talking about the opportunities with mental health marketing and the challenges with mental health marketing. just as an opening, know, things have come a long, long, long ways since Kathy began this.

Back in the old days, several decades ago, Kathy and I used to lead seminars around the country, and we go, okay, psychologists, MFCC, LCSW, psychiatrists, we kind of know who was in their own, who were working in the mental health group.

And, you know, back then, it was all private practice, all very small, people would pay money to come to CSP and then tell us all week and long that it’s unethical.

market that was always confusing to me, Kathy.

Kathy Gaughran

don’t know if much.

Stewart Gandolf

But, you know, today, mental health has come a long way. It’s big business. The acceptance in the public is big.

My kids spoke to a therapist today about a hassle she’s having with one of her roommates. I don’t not personally seeing a therapist, my kids wish I would.

mother brought a lot of her acceptance today, and Kathy is going to share some personal story about herself as well.

So, we’ll be talking about marketing. We’ll talk about mental health, but even if you’re not in mental health business, these concepts will probably fly to your business in a big way.

So, Kathy, I’d love you to introduce Kathy Garan. I’ve worked there for a long time. She’s our senior strategist here at Health Care Success.

Kathy, I’d love you to just introduce yourself and then share your presentation from Smash, and I’m sorry, from the mental health conference, and I’ll interject some color commentary as I see.

Kathy Gaughran

Thank you, Stuart. So, as Stuart said, my name’s Kathy Garan. I’ve been a strategist working on site storage for a couple of decades.

We’ve been very fortunate to be able to apply our passion around marketing and healthcare and help a lot of people over the years.

There’s been a larger emphasis in the mental and behavioral health space in the past five or eight years, and I’m thrilled to be able to pay it forward.

I’ve been in recovery for a couple of decades myself, also a patient in mental health, and one of the things that I talked about at this last conference, we were just in Franklin, Tennessee at the mental health marketing conference, was the fact that I have been searching for a therapist for over a year and half.

I’ve got great insurance. in the Southern California market. There’s lots of provisions available for me, but I just can’t find that connection.

So, we’re going to talk a little bit about that today, how to be visible for searches that are already happening, how to make sure your unique value proposition comes to the surface when you have an opportunity with

when looking for a solution. And the really critical parts on optimizing your online visibility and your online campaigns. So, we’re going to be talking about all that today and sharing a little bit of our stories.

I’m just thrilled that that mental health has come as far as it has in terms of acceptance. So it shared, you know, a little bit about its family when I was younger.

I also have bipolar diagnosis. My mom used to just refer to me as hyper. So a lot of changes have happened and I’m thrilled that we have opportunities to treat our mental health issues and to be able to provide that for more people now.

Stewart Gandolf

So, it’s an awesome opportunity.

Kathy Gaughran Yeah, that’s part of that Cathy.

SCREEN SHARING: Kathy started screen sharing – WATCH

Stewart Gandolf

Personally, like, you know, I had anxiety as a kid.

Kathy Gaughran I didn’t tell her that to a soul until probably 40.

Stewart Gandolf

Right.

Kathy Gaughran

Yeah, it’s unfortunate that people suffer in silence and whether there’s a sudden issue present, you know, one of the interesting things that I found at a recent.

Conference was that a lot of mental health providers are seeing patients with mental health primary and SUD historic. So, it’s not even present anymore, but it’s present in their history.

So, regardless of how a patient manifests to you, it’s just important that we appear as a viable solution accessible with our arms open wide, and that will fit for them.

So, we’re going to talk a little bit about how to position your practice, your messaging, and be available for the patients that are already in your market looking for solutions now.

So, I wanted to talk first a little bit about trends, 90% of the public think there is a mental health crisis in the United States today.

So, we have gained acceptance, not only in treatment, but also in conversation and dialogue. Half the young adults and one third of all adults report that they have felt anxious.

One third of could not get the. and mental health care services they need for whatever reason, when asked about specific barriers to accessing care, 80% cited cost, and more than 60%, just as Stuart said, cited shame and stigma as main obstacles.

And this is something that I love, again, to be able to participate in. I lose a lot of friends.

I’ve seen a lot of people lose their lives in addiction because of shame, trying to hide the fact that they were struggling, and it ultimately ended in their demise.

We know in addiction the only outcomes are hospitals, institutions, and death. And mental health is tied up in a big way.

So it’s important that we are recognizing the crazy demand that’s out there, and it’s upsetting ourselves up to be visible and accessible to these people when they’re searching.

The shortage of mental health providers is also prohibitive with 60% of psychologists reporting openings for new patients. And also, we’re finding that a lot of our health groups, their recruitment is as important as their patient targeting. So, one of the things I was telling Stewart about, my daughter was just visiting last weekend, and she just finished her master’s in psychology up in northern California and just found the job.

And she was describing to me her job search and how she went about it. And it’s very unique to what I’m used to, to what a lot of other vertical health care industry see.

So, I’ll be doing a podcast on that later on. Just really understanding how to target this demographic and position yourselves as the best place to work.

So, we’ll look at that later on. There’s this growing acceptance of understanding. There’s also rising interest in alternative therapies such as mindfulness, meditation and yoga.

We’re also seeing a much bigger adoption in teletherapy with advancements really stemming from COVID. Many people are also opting for online therapy.

Another trend is the integration of mental health services in the primary care settings. So that’s also something which could provide you an opportunity to cross network with primary care providers or look to more difficult cases that they could then prefer out to you.

So, it could be a positive, it could be a competitive factor in your market depending on how you work at it.

trends that I was able to identify AI in clinical care in a variety of different capacities, psychedelics as medicine, very controversial.

people are seeing great success. Other people are not wanting to be early adopters. So, we’ll continue to see that grow in this space.

Trauma informed care, blood tests for mental health, setting boundaries on social media, very important. Social media because selecting a mental health provider is an emotional journey.

Social media is a good complement to your campaign because of the high visual content and the ability to connect on that level.

So, it’s a good complement to pay search. it can stand alone, but it’s got to be a really tight campaign.

We have a fantastic social team that can help determine the best strategy and content to push, and then TMS obviously is huge.

TMS provides a program. What are the challenges with any repetitive visits? see this in mental health as well as physical therapy where you’re giving a treatment recommendation, you diagnose and recommend a course of action, and patients don’t comply with the total visits that were recommended.

They fall off during care, so one of the great things about TMS is it’s got to start in a finish, so it gives them a little bit more of a mental reason to complete treatment with subsequently more visits.

So, there’s been a big push on TMS recently. So, we look at the health care decision journey, and things have changed drastically, obviously.

There used to be very few media resources to choose. was from, we were typically looking at word of mouth, personal experience, physician, referral, friends, and family, maybe the yellow pages directory, preliminary online, but now it’s completely different.

We’ve got online information, reviews, we’ve got opportunities to be able to push on a variety of different platforms. So, it’s important that you understand your market, you understand what they’re looking at, what they’re reading, how they get their information, so we can be visible and available when they conduct their searches.

Stewart, do you any comments on this slide?

Stewart Gandolf

No, but it’s just, it’s so much more complex. mean, back in the old days, in fact, that advertising bubble in the old days was almost non-existent.

You and I helped create this sort of world of thinking about mental health as a business, along with others, of course.

But we were really groundbreaking back when we would advertise for, you know, mental health services. We were lucky to get our therapist just to ask their patients.

Kathy Gaughran

refer them to somebody.

Stewart Gandolf

So it’s just come so far that, I mean, it’s just kind of shocking, really, how far they it’s hand in hand with the market’s acceptance, which is fantastic.