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Headspace CEO on the use of AI in tackling burnout
00:17:28
The boss of the online self-care brand on how the company's developed in recent years
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- [00:00]
Tom Pickett
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- [00:06]
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- [01:11]
Lianna Byrne
Hi, I'm Lianna Byrne and this is Business Daily from the BBC World Service. This is where we take an in depth look at the global forces of money and work shaping our world. Anxiety, burnout and stress now cost the global economy billions of and the apps we use to manage them are evolving into something much bigger than digital self help.
- [01:34]
Tom Pickett
If you think about what health plans pay for, it's therapy. The reality is there aren't enough therapists and it's not actually the tool that is necessary in all cases.
- [01:45]
Lianna Byrne
Today we hear from the chief executive of Headspace, Tom Pickett, about artificial intelligence access and how mental health is rapidly speaking scaling. Now let's take a deep breath because the first few months of the year can be tough. If you're in the northern hemisphere, you don't get much sunlight. There's a lot of pressure to reinvent yourself. It can be overwhelming. It's also a time when many of us aren't feeling ourselves. Maybe you want to work on your mental health. Well, like most things, there's an app for that, several apps actually. These mental health and wellness smartphone applications emerged in the early 2000 and tens with meditation titles like Headspace and then Cam launching two years later. Today Headspace works with the US Navy to offer mental health support, things like meditation, coaching and AI tools to active duty sailors and their families, all outside the chain of command.
- [02:43]
Tom Pickett
In the Navy and in a lot of our military forces, the doctors, the medical staff is actually part of the company. So think about it. If you know you went to the doctor and the doctor was part of the BBC, you might be a little bit nervous about what you tell that person and what impact that might have on your career. And so the military has that phenomenon where people are a little bit nervous to talk to the doctors or particularly around mental health. What happens if I say something? Will I get pulled out of service? And so what the Navy was looking for is something that they could offer to their sailors that would allow them to get support day to day and would be outside of the chain of command.
- [03:28]
Lianna Byrne
Tom Pickett, chief executive of Headspace, knows a lot about mental health and the US Navy because he started his career as an F18 pilot and even graduated from Top Gun.
- [03:40]
Tom Pickett
Back when I was in the military, we didn't have any resources. We didn't really talk about mental health that much, even though we were out there in really stressful situations away from our families.
- [03:50]
Lianna Byrne
In fact, for most big companies and organizations, mental health was not a priority. It was only around the mid 2010s that mindfulness went mainstream. For example, according to the US National center for Health and Statistics, the share of American adults who had meditated in the past year tripled from 2012, when it was only at 2%, to 2017, when it hit 4. The COVID 19 pandemic boosted usage even more. Collectively, monthly active users for the top three meditation apps globally, Cam, Headspace and Meditopia were up 59% year on year in November 2020, according to data from app analytics company Sensor Tower. Today the mental health app's market size is valued at more than $7 billion, according to Fortune Business Insights. And it's growing. Headspace is one of the clear leaders in the market, which has been scaling through some big name partnerships and today Tom is its CEO. When he left the Navy, he went to work for big tech companies like Google, YouTube and DoorDash.
- [04:54]
Tom Pickett
As a pilot in the Navy, you fly, you lead multiplane formations, you also manage many, many people in the squadron. And so instantly as like a, you know, a 23 year old, you're thrown into a management position and you're put into very challenging situations, flying off aircraft carriers, leading many planes in foreign territory. And so I thought it was just a really great acceleration in terms of learning how to lead in stressful situations.
- [05:26]
Lianna Byrne
It's also probably quite helpful for learning change management because Headspace today is very different from the app that launched back in 2010. At the time it was a meditation app built around the voice of Andy Puddicombe, a British mindfulness teacher who'd spent a decade training as a Buddhist monk across Asia. Andy co founded Headspace with Rich Pearson, a former advertising executive who've taken up meditation to deal with corporate burnout. And it took off as mindfulness went mainstream. In 2021, Headspace merged with Ginger, a platform offering on demand coaching, therapy and psychiatry.
- [06:04]
Tom Pickett
So today Headspace offers full end to end mental health support. You might recall that Headspace merged several years ago with a company called Ginger. Headspace was the meditation and mindfulness part of the business, and Ginger brought coaching, therapy and psychiatry. And so we put the two companies together and we can offer end to end mental health support, really through a combination of self help plus human delivered care. And so that's what we offer today to employers. If you want to make sure that your employee base has access to whatever they need. Could just be getting better sleep, it could be to just help you with stressful situations, or it could be the case that, you know what, I actually really need to talk to a therapist. I need to be able to do that as quickly as possible. And so we make that available to employers and now increasingly health plans as well.
- [07:01]
Lianna Byrne
And those employer partnerships have become a core part of the business for Headspace. In the early days, it was just individuals downloading the app. Now it works with thousands of companies to offer mental health support as a staff benefit. Its clients include Starbucks, Adobe, LinkedIn, Delta Airlines, and major financial firms like bank
- [07:20]
Tom Pickett
of America in the US the market is really around a product that I call employee assistance program. Really that means it's kind of a catch all that. If an employee needs help with anything in mental health, from just an everyday kind of resource like Headspace content to I'm in crisis, we need to be able to solve that problem for them. We really focus on trying to get the right level of care to the right person at the right point in time. And we understand that, that everybody's mental health journey really varies, you know, and you might need to spike up to a higher level of care at certain points. And then you just need to maintain good regimen on an ongoing basis.
- [08:04]
Lianna Byrne
But is this improving workplace culture or is it just outsourcing stress rather than fixing the underlying problems companies often have?
- [08:13]
Tom Pickett
I think it's really critical. In fact, it remains, you know, a top two or three issue for employers. Obviously it was a major deal during COVID but it continues to be a top two or three issue for employers. And so having the ability to be able to on the low end, just create a more resilient workforce. I consider mental health something like going to the gym. We try to run, we try to work out, we try to lift weights. That's just to make us a healthier person. And in the same way, we have a bunch of tools could be mindfulness, could be meditation, could be support getting better sleep. It just helps you be a better employee to show up to work with the best possible mindset.
- [08:56]
Lianna Byrne
Last year, it signed a major deal with Cigna, one of the biggest health insurers in the US that gave around 7 million Americans access to Headspace through their insurance. And traditionally, mental health support has meant one thing, therapy. But Tom says that's not always what people need.
- [09:13]
Tom Pickett
If you think about what health plans pay for, it's therapy. And so it's not surprising that the solution that is offered to most people is like, we'll just send you to a therapist. The reality is there aren't enough therapists, and it's not actually the tool that is necessary in all cases. In fact, we all know the large number of people who suffer from mental health illnesses, but only about 50% of them actually ever go engage with a therapist. And we can try to convince them to do that, or we can create a broader tool set. And I think if we're going to really put a dent into the mental health challenges, we have to find as many entry points to mental health as possible.
- [09:58]
Lianna Byrne
So that's exactly what Headspace is doing. It still connects people with human coaches, therapists, and psychiatrists, but it's also investing heavily in artificial intelligence. Introducing EB Hey, Mark, what's on your mind today? I'm so burned out. This is Headspace's in app. Conversational agent Tom says this kind of support will become a bigger part of how we all access mental health care.
- [10:23]
Tom Pickett
I'm very bullish on the future of conversational AI as part of the mental health toolset. The fact that depending on where you, where you read, you know, 20 or 30% of the people in the U.S. and I think globally, have talked to a chatbot around mental health. I think that indicates the pent up demand, right, that we just haven't had tools that are available 247 to be able to have an interactive dialogue. Human therapy is the only solution. You sort of leave this big gap. So there's a tremendous amount of demand.
- [11:00]
Lianna Byrne
And there is Demand. Last year, OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, said around 1.2 million users talk to the chatbot about suicidal ideation each week. That's an extreme case and only accounts for 0.15% of its users. But it shows how people are turning to AI for emotional support. So it's worth asking, can a chatbot really help someone in distress? Critics warn these tools often lack nuance, can misread emotion and in some cases have given dangerously bad advice.
- [11:34]
Tom Pickett
If you think about the general use chatbots, they're pretty amazing. They're pretty good at almost everything. But they were not purpose built for mental health. And so it's really unfortunate that the guardrails were not in place for mental health and we've had some bad outcomes there because I think that has left, you know, a sour taste as to what AI can do in the mental health space. On the flip side, we, we have millions of people who are seeking support, right? Which really demonstrates the demand at Headspace. We are not trying to build an AI therapist. We are really focused on more everyday mental health. How can I help you better regulate your emotions. So a lot of people come just in an elevated state and they really just want to feel better. And so how can I have a conversation with eb? How can I use that conversation to de stress to help reframe how I'm thinking about a problem? And EB also helps recommend content. Like we have a tremendous number of guided programs and content on our service. I can much better deliver the perfect meditation for somebody if I've had a conversation with them. So I really think about this as the path for a much greater personalized interactive experience. And I think the usage of ChatGPT for mental health really just shows the overall demand for this.
- [13:04]
Lianna Byrne
You're listening to Business daily from the BBC World Service.
- [13:10]
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- [14:12]
Lianna Byrne
I'm Lianna Byrne and today I'm speaking to Tom Pickett, Chief executive of Headspace. As I was saying, while more people are turning to AI Chatbots for emotional support. There's also growing concerns. There have been numerous cases where AI tools gave dangerously bad mental health advice, sometimes with tragic consequences. Last year, the BBC investigated how chatbots were advising young people on suicide and sharing health misinformation.
- [14:40]
Tom Pickett
EBB was really designed by clinicians, purpose built for the mental health use case. And so first and forem we had to think about safety. We started with very basic use cases like interactive journaling and thinking about gratitude. And then we started to open it up into broader conversations, but only as we really felt comfortable with the box that we created around EBB to have appropriate level conversations, but not to go outside of those conversations, to have the right safety guardrails in place so that if people are starting to talk harm or have deep depression or suicidal ideation, that we're able to intervene and get them to a different set of resources. So we've stepped into it really cautiously and I think it's been really powerful. A good portion of our users actually do engage with ebb. If you think about it, some people come to headspace just for meditation and they have a routine. And so in that case they just kind of come to headspace and find their meditation and they're good. But for a lot of folks it's. Let me, let me just tell you what's going on. Let me tell you about my day and as I mentioned, that really helps us to better tailor the experience to them. I met with one of our members last week. She was in our office and this woman was in therapy and she said there's just so much pressure around therapy. I've got one hour with my therapist and how am I going to get all the things that I want to talk about accomplished in that one hour? And, and so what she finds EB really useful for is like just number one, like how do I find the words to describe how I'm feeling? And AB really helps her really put that together and make a better productive use of the therapy session that she has ahead of her. And it also helps her just to better on an on demand or in the moment type of experience.
- [16:48]
Lianna Byrne
Still, can we trust AI to offer support safely and who's accountable when something goes wrong?
- [16:54]
Tom Pickett
I have great optimism around how AI built, well built, with the right safeguards in place is going to do a tremendous amount of good. EV does not diagnose mental conditions, it does not treat specific conditions. We make sure that it operates more in what we call a wellness space. It helps you process your thoughts. We do more of like motivational interviewing techniques with our users to help them come up with solutions for themselves. And then safety. We make sure that we have a separate algorithm running in the background detecting for suicide ideation. We have an algorithm that's detecting self harm or other types of harmful situations in the background. We have clinicians who review transcripts of what's happening to make sure that something that doesn't go wrong in terms of the way AB is operating. And then we point people to the appropriate resources and we stop discussions at appropriate points if it's, if it's going out of bounds, which is something that some of the general use chatbots have did not do. And that's really the path that really got them in trouble.
- [18:09]
Lianna Byrne
But even if you build something safe, there's still a question of who gets to use it. Most mental health apps, including Headspace, are based on a subscription model. That means if you're not getting it through your job or your health plan, you're paying out of pocket. And with the cost of living rising globally, many people are scaling back. Subscriptions are often the first thing to go.
- [18:31]
Tom Pickett
Headspace has always been offered as a consumer subscription model, but we have gone aggressively to employers historically to start unlocking broader populations to make access to a resource like Headspace available. And more recently, we are starting to work with health plans. I would like to take the onus off of the consumer to pay. I feel like this is a baseline resource that should be offered to everyone. And the more that we can do with technology, the more that we can do with content. We can really keep the cost of this really low so that we can open up access more broadly.
- [19:11]
Lianna Byrne
That was Tom Pickett, chief executive of Headspace, wrapping up this episode of Business Daily from the BBC World Service. If you're new here, why not subscribe to our daily podcast? You'll find episodes on a huge range of business and economic stories. I'm Liana Byrne. Thanks for listening.