#12 Profit vs Purpose in Mental Health

Hi friends, 

I got into a bit of a fight this week on LinkedIn…

I saw a post about the appointment of the Doordash CRO as the new CEO of Headspace.

The post questioned the impact this would have on the clinicians working at Headspace. It’s a fair question and we were having a good discussion on whether Healthcare companies should have people with clinical experience as their CEO.

But in the comments I noticed something else.

Another interesting conversation was kicking off.

I started reading comments like this…

“There will always be an inherent conflict between the goals of capital-led enterprise (making more $ than you spend) and the goals of the healing services industry”

“So glad I don’t work in the Mental Health tech sector, its inherently toxified by the tech sector.”

or

“I hate the way health of all kinds and education have been turned into profit machines.”

I hear quotes like this all the time in Mental Health.

There seems to be a pervasive scepticism about for-profit organisations in this industry.

And for a long time, I’ve wondered where exactly this scepticism comes from? I also wondered if it was justified?

And if it wasn’t justified, what impact was this attitude having on our ability to create solutions?

I took these questions to the shower with me and soon started to think about exactly what role for-profit companies could and should play in Mental Health.

By the time the hot water was running out, I was also thinking about what we need to do at a systems level to ensure that the for-profit companies that do exist, act in the best interests of patients and have the best chance of making a meaningful impact on this problem we all care so deeply about.

That’s what we get into in this week’s edition of The Hemingway Report.

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