Michael Phelps is arguably the best Olympic
athlete of all time, having earned more medals than any other individual
Olympian throughout history, totaling 28 medals - 23 of which were gold -
across five Summer Olympic Games. Beginning in 2000 and finishing in 2016,
"The Baltimore Bullet" has won more medals in the Summer Olympic
Games than over half of all countries to ever have competed in the events.
Many people remember several exposés written and
broadcast about Michael Phelps' struggles with substance abuse disorder,
depression, and ADHD - he could suffer from more mental health issues from
these three - roughly four years ago following his second arrest for driving
under the influence of alcohol in September 2014. It was around this time
Phelps went to a drug rehabilitation program and managed to get clean. Since
Phelps hit his low point four years ago, he's tried his hardest to take the stigma
away from mental health issues and related treatment in hopes that others would
be encouraged to seek out the help that the all-star swimmer delayed for far
too many years.
Phelps got on board with Talkspace and the
Talkspace app just recently, no more than a few months ago. Talkspace is a
company that links people in need of counseling simply to get through tough
times when nobody else will listen and people with serious mental health
disorders that need ongoing treatment through the Talkspace app, a means of
obtaining online therapy.
Statistics vary, but roughly 20 to 25 percent of
people around the world suffer from at least one mental health disorder at any
given time. Some of us experience such issues on a short-term basis - perhaps
depression for only a few months during a tough period in life, never to
experience the mental health condition again - while others have been plagued
by multiple serious, debilitating psychological disorders throughout our entire
lives. Unfortunately, over half of American adults with mental health
problems fail to seek treatment for their issues.
One of Talkspace's biggest benefits is that it
allows people to bypass trips to counselors, psychiatrists, therapists, and
other related practitioners by being linked directly to mental health
professionals without doing so much as leaving one's home. Lots of
Americans don't have regular access to transportation, leaving them entirely
unable to visit mental health service providers. Further, many more people
can't be bothered to be seen in such practitioners' offices because they're too
caught up in the possibility that someone they know personally notices them
visiting such facilities - the stigma surrounding mental health here in the
United States is very much alive, unfortunately, which makes Talkspace's form of online therapy one of the most revolutionary things to happen to the industry in
some time.
Ever since Talkspace was created slightly more
than six years ago, Oren and Roni Frank - the co-founders of the company - have
garnered more than one million clients as of just a few months ago.
