SilverCloud Health and HSE to make online therapy available across State

SilverCloud Health, a company that has provided online therapy and wellness programmes to millions of people globally, is making its services available to more people locally through the Health Service Executive (HSE).

The company, which has partnered with the HSE on a pilot programme to deliver online psychological interventions for depression and anxiety to primary care psychological services since 2018, is to now roll out its services nationwide from next week.

Referrals for the service will also be open from a greater number of sources, including GPs and Jigsaw, the support service for young people.

Founded in 2012 by Ken Cahill, the company is a spin-out from a collaborative project between the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC), Mater University Hospital and Trinity College Dublin. It was established following more than 10 years of advanced clinical and academic research.

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SilverCloud’s services are used by more than 650,000 people globally with 30,000 new users every month. This marks a doubling in the number of users of the platform over the past year as more people seek support with their mental health in part due to the Covid crisis.

“As a result of Covid, and the restrictions on movement as well, our lives feel very different and many of us are feeling discombobulated and are reaching out for support,” Mr Cahill said.

Service users

SilverCloud, which has raised more than $30 million (€25.5 million) from backers to date, provides more than 40 per cent of all the National Health Service's (NHS) mental health services. It also offers its services to private healthcare providers such as Bupa, and to corporates such as Cadbury, JP Morgan, Disney and PepsiCo.

Its platform provides a broad range of evidence-based clinical content, programmes and support in the areas of mental health and chronic/long-term illness.

A study undertaken by the NHS into SilverCloud showed a 50 per cent reduction in symptomology following eight weeks of sessions with this maintained for a prolonged period of time and with continued improvement in 27 per cent of cases.

"SilverCloud is enormously proud to be expanding our digital mental health and wellbeing offering to Ireland with the HSE. We have seen the benefits to health systems all over the world when GPs have a way to offer on-time and on-demand mental health and wellbeing interventions to help people rather than referring people to long waiting lists for overburdened services," said Mr Cahill.

“In a time when GPs and other health and mental health services are under pressure in their communities due to Covid, we need to support them and their patients in any way we can,” he added.

SilverCloud Health is expecting to hit turnover of €20 million this year, at least one year ahead of its original target.