Turning therapy into a status symbol
What could possibly go wrong?
In the summer of 2023, I started consulting young mental health startups on how to connect with therapists for onboarding and how to present themselves to the general public.
Throughout such discussions, one theme kept repeating itself,
“India is a deeply status-driven society. We want to portray therapy as something cool and induce FOMO in people. We want therapy to be a status symbol like fitness.”
The enthusiastic founders were correct in their diagnosis of the modern Indian society. We are deeply status-driven. Then again, most collectivistic societies are. We are so status-driven that we spend money on things we cannot afford to signal status to others. (source)
It then makes perfect sense to portray therapy as another status symbol, much like an iPhone, a gym membership, or drinking black coffee.
Such status symbols have some things in common
Scarcity: They bank on a real or perceived shortage of money, time, power, or skill, eg a Rolex is out of reach for most people financially
Value Signal: They serve as symbols for values a society appreciates, like power, wealth, or taste, eg, reading Kafka means you have a deep appreciation of literature
Social recognition: You get a community of people who accept and recognize the symbol as an indicator of underlying values, eg, drinking black coffee shows that you have a taste for finer things in life (and you hate yourself).
Similarly, the goal was for therapy to serve as a signal of emotional intelligence.
Therapy is scarcely used. It is expensive for most people in India. It signals money and time.
Going to therapy suggests you understand your emotions better and are in touch with them
Going to therapy gets you access to the community of people also going to therapy and discussing personal progress
Thousands of rupees were spent on marketing through workshops, social media ads, think pieces, and editorials showcasing the innumerable benefits of therapy.
You may have noticed more comedians talking about their experience with therapy, more influencers sharing how therapy changed their lives, and more ads on social media about the latest mental health startup trying to make therapy affordable.
It’s important to differentiate between lifting the stigma over something versus prescribing it to your audience. Visiting a therapist is still considered a matter of shame in most Indian families.
How do we know these people weren’t just doing their bit to tackle this shame that people experience?
The difference is in how we talk about therapy. It is one thing to share it as a health intervention that helped you in moments of distress. It’s another thing to prescribe it as a “moral good” that everyone must participate in.
The former makes people think that therapy may be worth a try. The latter makes you believe that if you’re not going to therapy, there must be something wrong with you.
The founders wanted to achieve the latter, thinking it would be the same as the former.
To a degree, the founders succeeded. The demand for therapists has been going up in urban and rural India. More and more people are seeking therapeutic services.
But they are coming in with expectations that are wildly different from what therapy can offer them. We have clients coming in expecting quick fixes, generic advice, or some divine knowledge about what ails them.
The deification of therapy in pop culture means the therapists end up becoming the priests. Expected to be aware of everything around them at all times and have the perfect insight when the situation demands it.
An example of this expectation is an anecdote shared in my DMs recently. The client came in but refused to share anything beyond some trouble sleeping.
Any attempt at exploration of stress, relationships, anxieties, or worries was met with anger.
The only complaint was that the client couldn’t sleep, and the therapist should know how to fix it automatically without requiring any more context.
Unsurprisingly, the client left the session frustrated, feeling their time and money had been wasted.
There has been another consequence of the status symbol attached to therapy.
For every status symbol, there is a counter-symbol. For every mainstream culture piece, there is a counterculture that develops in opposition to it.
Having an iPhone is cool? Maybe. I am happy with my simple Lava phone. It’s cheaper and does the same things.
Going to the gym is cool? Maybe. But we are simple people. We believe in simpler things. There’s nothing good old yoga can’t fix.
Drinking black coffee is cool? Maybe. We are old-school. We like our coffee sweet and full of milk. We don’t have the same high tastes as the elites.
The same thing happened to therapy, too. It’s actually happening right now.
Therapy? That’s just something the rich kids need. There’s nothing a night out with friends cannot fix.
Everything seems better and cheaper than therapy if you scroll through social media.
“Ice cream is cheaper than therapy.”
“Shopping is my therapy.”
“Who needs therapy when we have the mountains?”
These sentences may seem like a simple misunderstanding of the therapeutic process, but they reveal a sense of rebellion — a rebellion against the status symbol that is therapy. A mini-resistance against the world telling you to visit a therapist.
The problem is that therapy had barely become mainstream before the counterculture to it developed, and the counterculture is so strong that I doubt it will go away any time soon.
This creates problems. Psychotherapy, ultimately, should be viewed as a health intervention or as a journey of self-exploration.
Turning it into a status symbol has meant that people are happy to compromise on their mental health to stand out from the crowd. Who doesn’t want to feel special, right?
It has added another layer of resistance among people.
→ Therapy is for the rich and elite.
→ I am not rich or elite.
∴ I do not need therapy.
For the counterculture, therapy has become a punchline, as shared above.
Is it possible there’s a silver lining to this dark cloud of marketing? I think there might be.
The counter culture that is anti-therapy or therapy-skeptic may have been protected from the unregulated psychotherapy ecosystem in India. In this ecosystem, you are more likely to meet with an unqualified or unethical therapist than one dedicated to your healing. Turning people away from therapy may have protected many from its worst form.
Mental health care in India currently stands at a precarious crossroads.
We have
→ people seeking help, but are unsure who to go to.
→ Unqualified professionals influencing the mainstream culture while the government lags in its regulations.
→ Next to no protection for either practitioners or clients, leaving them vulnerable to harm from bad-faith practitioners.
While this goes on, we still have new mental health startups propping up in every city, trying to make therapy the ‘cool’ thing to do.
Where do we go from here? The paths are many, the time to decide is now.
The future can be both bright and bleak, depending on what we decide to do today.
A thought provoking piece✨
❤️