https://archive.ph/uQyFa#selection-373.1-1279.109
'Working from home is contributing to Britain's mental health crisis'
Interview: Headspace Health boss on how he turned to meditation to
tackle imposter syndrome
By
James Titcomb
3 July 2022 • 11:00am
Russell Glass turned to meditation during a stressful time at LinkedIn
Headspace Health
Russell Glass turned to meditation during a stressful time at LinkedIn
CREDIT: Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph
A lot of people are reflexively sceptical when meditation is brought up.
“I was one of those people,” admits Russell Glass, the American chief
executive of Headspace Health on a trip to London.
“I’d heard the term mindfulness before and - do you have the term ‘woo
woo’ over here? - It all felt kind of woo woo to me.”
Today, Glass, a serial entrepreneur from New Jersey, meditates daily and
has been the boss of one of the world’s biggest mental health apps since
October 2021.
Headspace, which has offices in California and London, experienced an
influx of users during the pandemic as rates of depression and
loneliness soared.
Glass’s Damascene conversion was years earlier. In 2014, he had just
sold his marketing start-up Bizo to LinkedIn for $175m (£144m), becoming
one of the social networking giant’s top executives and netting a
fortune. He should have been on top of the world, but says he found it
difficult to feel at home.
“I was really struggling when I joined LinkedIn from a mental health
standpoint. I had had my third daughter about a week before I sold the
company and I wasn't sleeping very well. I got to LinkedIn and had a bit
of imposter syndrome and had a bit of anxiety,” Glass says.
LinkedIn chief executive Jeff Weiner had brought in the founders of the
meditation app Headspace - an unlikely British duo of Andy Puddicombe, a
former Buddhist monk, and Richard Pierson, a marketing executive - to
speak to the company’s employees. Glass thought he had nothing to lose
and tried it out.
Three weeks later, a colleague said something in a meeting that might
have otherwise set Glass off. “I was able to note the feeling and
realise that it was just my stress response. And I was able to let it go.”
He has since dedicated his career to mindfulness. In 2018 Glass took
charge of Ginger, a remote therapy app that lets users text or video
call with professional psychiatrists. And last year, he merged the
company with Headspace, the app he attributes to his own rejuvenated
state of mind.
Today, the combined company - Headspace Health - is valued at $3bn and
is at the forefront of a booming digital mental health movement. Its
apps have been used by more than 100m people, although the number who
stick with it on a daily basis are more modest.
Use of meditation apps surged during the pandemic, which triggered a
mental health crisis as students were barred from classrooms, employees
were cooped up and family members cut off from one another.
The World Health Organisation said in March that Covid-19 had seen
global prevalence of anxiety and depression increase by 25pc. The
organisation estimates that 70pc of the 1bn people worldwide with a
mental health need are not getting access to care, and that just 2pc of
healthcare spending is dedicated to it.
With budgets at breaking point, Glass argues that digital solutions are
the only realistic option.
“Here in the UK, 40pc of GP visits right now are for mental health. It's
just a huge amount of need. You have to be able to access it virtually
if we're going to actually deliver on the scale of what the needs are
now,” he explains.
NHS mental health therapy referrals by gender, 2020-21
Women aged 65 and over
Men aged 65 and over
Women aged 36-64
Men aged 36-64
Women aged 18-35
Men aged 18-35
49,338
24,713
361,842
199,406
545,614
238,078
SOURCE: HOUSE OF COMMONS LIBRARY, MENTAL HEALTH STATISTICS (ENGLAND)
Headspace offers its users guided meditations, sleep aids, and focus
music. The company points to a ream of academic studies suggesting its
apps reduce stress, anxiety and burnout, and increase focus. Next year
the company intends to integrate the app with Ginger, which has an army
of professionally-trained therapists on call.
In a sign of how much more mainstream the issue of mental health has
become, the Duke of Sussex has joined a rival app, BetterUp, as chief
impact officer, while Headspace has a partnership with English
footballer Raheem Sterling.
Many tech businesses, such as Peloton and Netflix, boomed during the
pandemic only to see a drop off in demand, but Glass says the mental
health crisis is here to stay.
“Unfortunately, I think that there's going to be a long tail to the
pandemic when it comes to mental health. The amount of need right now,
it's not sustainable, and it's not going to lead to good outcomes from a
healthcare standpoint,” he says.
“The social isolation, particularly for the youth, has become a really
big deal. At the moment in life when you need social interaction more
than any other moment in life, it got ripped away from our adolescents
and teens.”
Glass also describes ongoing working from home as a major factor. “If
you ask the average employee, they want remote work, they want that
option. And yet [employers] also have to recognise that it's not always
going to be a beneficial thing from a mental standpoint.”
While Headspace charges individuals a monthly subscription fee, a large
part of its revenue comes from businesses who offer the app as a perk to
staff. Around 3,500 companies subscribe, with 600 of those in the UK.
Glass says around one in five staff within those companies end up using
the app and chief executives tend to use it at a higher rate than rank
and file employees. Glass says there are, however, some worrying signs
that companies might be stepping back from mental health support they
provided at the start of the pandemic.
Headspace's workplace subscriptions are popular with CEOs, says Russell
Glass
Headspace's workplace subscriptions are popular with CEOs, says Russell
Glass CREDIT: Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph
Part of the challenge is convincing people that apps can offer the same
benefits as in-person professionals. Glass at least has an ally in Sajid
Javid, Health Secretary, who is pushing to modernise the NHS with
digital services.
“80pc of people who come into a GP office with a mental health need can
be handled sub-clinically, either with self care where our Headspace app
might be appropriate, or with coaching. We know that we can help in the
vast majority of cases,” says Glass.
“If there's any silver lining [to the pandemic], it's that it caused a
giant increase in people's willingness to adopt digital, virtual mental
health solutions. So you have far more people getting access than they did.”
Could it be a full replacement, putting an end to visits to a musty
psychiatrists’ offices and leather recliners? Glass argues that many
people prefer virtual visits, which might remove the stigma of being
spotted leaving a therapist’s office.
A future step could be robot psychiatrists. Glass says the company’s
Ginger app is already using artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor
conversations for signs of stress or anxiety and recommend particular
language to professional psychiatrists.
“One day, maybe we’ll get to the point where we have an AI-based bot
that augments the care. It’s way out into the future.”
For now, Glass says his goal is to have meditation regarded as on a par
with brushing teeth: something people do to prevent problems emerging
further down the line. “We need to help educate the world so that as
many people as possible are thinking about [that]. It’s the early innings.”
A lot of people may still think the idea sounds a little “woo woo”. But
Glass is determined to win them over.
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