Dale Cook, CEO of mental health company Learn to Live, joins Cheddar News to discuss the platform and its recent funding.

Between Bells

Mental Health Platform Learn to Live Announces Fresh Financing

Welcome back guys between bells and cheddar news as some governors began to speak out, urging the country to begin treating covid 19 less like a pandemic and more like an endemic resources like mental health platform still in dire need. According to the CDC, about a third of americans reported symptoms of anxiety or depression in their latest household pulse survey. So helping to fuel the demand of those who may suffer from the mental health crisis is Dale Cook. Co founder and ceo of learn to live dale. Good to have you here. Thanks so much for joining us. Your platform currently right now available. So 33 million people nationwide. So tell us how you're improving the access to mental healthcare here. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me today and engaging us in this important conversation around access to mental health. The way learn to live really seeks to address the access issue is to provide really two things. One is what we call self directed digital programs that address specific mental health problems. And then the second is 24 7 live clinician coaching, which is really optional for our members who engage in these cognitive behavioral therapy based digital programs. Okay, so your platform recently announced financing from concord HealthPartners. Tell us how you know what you're gonna use with that funding and how this is going to go to really help increase the demand here. That's right. Well, we're really fortunate to have just terrific financing partners like concord HealthPartners leading the way along with, you know, a substantial group of collaborators and clients to help us increase access. And a lot of that financing is going towards, you know, roughly doubling the size of our company. We're a private company but we're growing very, very quickly. And so we're going to add a lot of staff to help enhance our products to continue to build out access. Um and we'll be doing other initiatives to to really help spread the word about the efficacy of digital programs. They've been around for more than 20 years and have been studied extensively from a clinical point of view. And so they're tremendously effective and they help ease that burden of, you know what is now, as I'm sure, you know, a limited supply of traditional, you know, forms of treatment like therapists or counselors and psychiatrists. And so part of that funding will also go towards expanding the conversation in places like this to help make sure that people know that they have access to these kinds of programs. All right, so tell us a little bit about what programs are available, what sort of things will people be able to see on this? So, we currently have five programs that are very targeted. What I mean by that is someone can engage with us on the learn to live platform and with our clinician coaches for depression for social anxiety for stress anxiety and worry for insomnia for substance use and what they experienced in that program is a series of educational activities Um as well as activities that they do in between the 81-hour lessons to help them apply what they're learning online to apply that to their day to day lives. And so these programs as I mentioned are based on cognitive behavioral therapy which is a very effective form of treatment for mental health problems and the one of the unlocks of CBT that makes it so powerful is practice and so learn to live tools provide a lot of quick, easy digital access for someone to practice those tools. You know, if they're out in public or they're in the grocery store, they're going through their day to day lives. It's that immediacy of access not just to the tools but then to our life coaches if they want that. Um And that's really how they can progress quickly. Alright. Gayle. Whenever we get to the endemic phase of this pandemic, you know, obviously we've made a lot of investments in mental health during the pandemic. But how do you sort of you your company and other mental health programs. Once we reach that endemic phase of the pandemic, you know, it's a great question to ask. I think what I say a lot is that, you know, there was a considerable amount of mental health suffering and demand pre pandemic. Um You know, the National Institute of Mental Health before the pandemic. Um did a survey and extensive survey that indicated that one in five Individuals Americans over 18 suffer from a mental health problem. And if you look at studies across someone's entire life, roughly, half the people in the United States will suffer from a mental health problem at some point in their lives. And that was all pre pandemic. And so the pandemic has certainly increased demand. But even more than that, I would say it's it's really just shone a brighter light on the pre existing demand. And so I guess the short answer is that, you know, we certainly see to things happening post pandemic. One is that demand will continue to exceed the supply of traditional therapy or therapist in person therapy. And two, there's something called, what we call the long tail of Covid, which will be that over time, even as the pandemic becomes more endemic, people will realize that they're still suffering from anxiety, depression. They just didn't realize it earlier. Or it may come up later and there will be a tremendous need for mental health services of all kinds, not just the kinds of services we provide dale. What's the price point for this service And then with a myriad of different competitors out there. What makes learn to live a good one for a lot of people out there. So, you know, one of the three top barriers for people to get effective mental health treatment is cost. And so what we effectively do is we work with organizations to partner with them to cover the costs, which then makes the access for the individual user zero cost. And so we may partner with a health plan or with an employer or a university um or other kind of collaborator partner who actually covers the cost with us to provide the service so that the user has no cost for them or their family members. I think the second part of your question was sort of how do we fit in our space? Um I think there's a good number of really effective providers in our space which we're excited about because it's a big problem. Um I think a few things that make us unique is that our programs are very clinically grounded. We have a lot of peer review published clinical research showing their clinical efficacy, which is very important. I think second is we get a tremendous amount of engagement and so we have over 50% of our users that start with us six months later are still working with our programs which in the digital world is really substantial. And then I think third is we're continuously expanding on access and efficacy of our programs. You know, this this year we launched fully in spanish, we launched a clinician portal. We're launching more programs this year. And so our focus is to continue to expand to millions and millions to enable them to live better. And I think that's part of how we're somewhat different than some others in our space. Well, congratulations on all the success so far. Dale's such a pleasure to have you here. Dale Cook is the co founder and Ceo of learned to live.