“After a decade of researching the therapy industry I have finally formulated the elevator pitch for UberTherapy – ‘The Datafication of Despair: The extraction industry that games reality and offers magic solutions to the problems you never had’. I am supposed to feel happier than this. 

The occupational hazard of researching UberTherapy is the rising panic at the size and speed of the uberization process taking place in the therapy sector. I have the feeling of being hurled around on a fairground ride, between the audacious game that is being played with our mental health and what I have come to see as the corrupted intention behind it…

As the exaggerated claims of digital health technologies become absorbed into our culture, I find myself in a hall of mirrors, distorted by an idea of therapy I know not to be true, offering therapeutic unicorns and guaranteed recovery from being myself. Looking into the digital mirror, I wonder at whether I am having an AI hallucination where the therapy Large Language Models and their generative AI offer an instant way out of seeing myself as I really am…

I have the sickening feeling of being sat at the top of a broken Ferris wheel, excited by the panoramic view but without a clue how to get down to the ground safely, deregulated by the thuggish neglectful violence of the system I now see in Angerland.”

UberTherapy is the essential guide to the rise of digital therapy for anyone working in, researching or using mental health services. This timely book explores the emerging uberization of therapy through algorithmic control, datafication of despair and attrition by design. Analyzing the deployment of e-commerce business models the book makes a compelling case that the rise of “therapeutic Tinder” offers new consumers of therapy a way to avoid the deep and uncomfortable work of therapy. UberTherapy offers a defence for the irreplaceable value of human therapists and a roadmap for preserving the legacies of real therapy in the digital world.

This week Waterstones will be promoting a pre-order offer for UberTherapy: The new business of mental health. Click here and enter SUMMER25 to receive 25% off RRP.

"A powerful, well-informed and deeply personal treatise which deepens our understanding of therapy industry and 'the new business of mental health'. An exceptional intervention in exceptionally challenging times."

Jason Arday, University of Cambridge

"An important and engaging contribution that critically evaluates the commercialization of mental health and how emotional management and self-help are generating new problems in our personal and working lives."

Miguel Martínez Lucio, University of Manchester

“UberTherapy traces the roots of our current public mental health crisis to two interlinked forces that emerged at the end of the first decade of this century: public austerity and the rise of mobile technology platforms. In their wake, public mental health care delivered by qualified professionals has been steadily overtaken by AI-driven therapies — a model of creeping privatisation, datafication, financialisation, and commercialisation. We now inhabit a world of mental health care where we know the ‘dynamic price’ of everything, but the intrinsic value of nothing — where community, patient and workers' rights are displaced by the illusion of a technology-aided recovery. Elizabeth Cotton teaches us that the future of care lies not in a Silicon Valley fantasy, but in solidarity: the collective power to demand and create the much better help we all deserve.”

James Farrar, Worker Info Exchange

“The field of therapy,  however you define it, is overflowing with books. Many are informative some excellent but what they all have in common is specialism and invitations to join specific club perspectives. What is rare is that Elizabeth Cotton has not fallen into this trap but has the wit and courage to present matters in a wider perspective as evidenced by her new book UberTherapy. l strongly recommend this book to all who wish to retain a free enough state of mind in life and work.”

Anton Obholzer, Psychoanalyst, Psychiatrist and Former CEO of the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

UberTherapy: The new business of mental health will be published by Bristol University Press in October 2025.  To pre-order a copy please go here.

To follow the book’s development go to Surviving Work Linktr.ee

@survivingwork.bsky.social @ubertherapy.bsky.social

@survivingwk @ubertherapies