UberTherapy and the Enshittification of our Relational Lives: Part 2 of our Interview with Elizabeth Cotton

About this episode

Elizabeth Cotton discusses the implications of app-based therapy and the transformation of mental health care in the digital age.

Elizabeth Cotton is Associate Professor of Responsible Business at the University of Leicester and the founder of Surviving Work , which carries out socially engaged research on mental health and work. She has worked with health teams and trade unions, practiced as a psychotherapist in the NHS, and now runs the Digital Therapy Project, a group of UK and US researchers studying the future of therapy from both sides of the relationship. In her new book, UberTherapy: The New Business of Mental Health , she explores the effects of reorganizing mental health care around the logic of the app store. Therapy is now something you can scroll through on your phone, match with in seconds, and rate like a ride share. Platforms promise frictionless access and personalized care. What is harder to see is how this new "mental health marketplace" is reshaping what therapy is, how it feels, and who it is really built to serve. UberTherapy is part political economy, part insider account of therapy work, part literary exploration of what it actually feels like to bring our most distressed selves to the mental health app ecosystem. In the second part of our conversation, Cotton traces how public…

People in this episode

Guest: Elizabeth Cotton

Topics covered

• mental health
• therapy
• platform capitalism
• digital products
• public austerity
• AI in therapy

Keywords

• UberTherapy
• mental health marketplace
• digital therapy
• algorithm governance
• AI-driven solutions

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Leicester, Surviving Work, NHS, Digital Therapy Project

Books & works: UberTherapy: The New Business of Mental Health

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