Telehealth startup Dialogue is launching the second phase of its Stress Management and Well-Being program, which offers resources to employers who wish to provide proactive and convenient mental health and healthcare support to employees.
“More and more employers want to offer better and easy to access support to prevent and treat mental illness.”
The new program is now available to all employers in Canada. Phase II will use data collected by thousands of mental health consultations from Phase I of the program, to offer what Dialogue claims will be the first virtual multidisciplinary mental health program in Canada. Data from Phase I indicated that 20 percent of patients who had access to the first phase of the program reached out to evaluate their risk of suffering from high stress, anxiety, or depression.
Phase I of the mental health program was developed over the course of the last year alongside partners like SSQ Insurance, which made the service available to its employees. The Stress Management and Well-Being program aims to ensure patients have access to psychologists, psychotherapists, social workers, doctors, nurses, and medical specialists, to offer a personalized treatment plan for each patient’s needs.
“On World Mental Health Day, we are proud to officially launch the first proactive and multidisciplinary solution to all employers who want to take on the growing issue of mental health in the workplace,” said Anna Chif, Dialogue’s co-founder and chief strategy and product officer. “More and more employers want to offer better and easy to access support to prevent and treat mental illness. We are proud to have developed a program with outstanding results specifically tailored to respond to the workplace mental health needs.”
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Patients from Phase I that consulted with signs of depression and received multidisciplinary treatment had an average improvement of 55 percent over seven weeks, Dialogue’s patient health questionnaire assessment tool found. After treatment, Dialogue also reported that 96 percent of patients were “very satisfied” with the care they received.
Founded in 2016 and incubated in Diagram Ventures, Dialogue this year closed a $40 million funding round, led by Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Holtzbrinck Ventures. The startup also raised a $12 million Series A in February 2018.
Dialogue’s Stress Management and Well-Being program is grounded by four pillars: scientific proactive screening delivered through Dialogue’s app, a multidisciplinary and multi-channel approach centred around the patient’s needs, a habit-forming approach to decrease stress levels, and personalized follow-ups to ensure treatment adherence.
“We are pleased to have been able to contribute to the development of Dialogue’s Stress Management and Well-Being program,” said Éric Trudel, senior vice president of strategy and product management at SSQ Insurance. “Mental health issues are at the root of many issues and represent, as an insurer, a major concern. We continually seek to provide relevant tools and deploy innovative solutions that will contribute to the well-being of our policyholders.”
Image courtesy Dialogue