Daybreak Health CEO Alex Alvarado on VatorNews podcast

Daybreak Health offers mental health counseling for teenagers

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Bambi Francisco Roizen interviews Alex Alvarado, founder, and CEO of Daybreak Health, a new type of online counseling designed for teens. Subscribe to our podcasts to get our interviews and shows as soon as they're published!  

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Highlights from the interview:

• 10 million teens struggling with some mental illness. 90% of them will not receive evidence-based treatments. 
• The mental health system is broken because 1) lack of accessibility to counselors/help 2) quality of care is poor 3) treatments are expensive.
• Daybreak focuses on clinical behavioral analysis therapies -- CBT, DBT, ACT - cognitive behavioral therapy; dialectical behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy. These are different from traditional psychoanalytic therapies that focus on a person’s history vs a person’s behavior.
• The root causes of the rise in mental illness are social media and technology as well as the coddling of the American mind (to borrow from Jonathan Haidt’s research).
• Daybreak is currently used by upwards of 30 schools.
• Daybreak has around 13 counselors.
• Daybreak will help with insurance reimbursement. Parents can also choose to pay directly on a monthly basis. The program includes one 50-minute individual session per week; messaging with counselors plus other engaging activities for teens.