Removing barriers to mental health care
Accessing mental-health care in smaller communities such as Niagara is a challenge due to limited resources and the complexity of the public system, says an official with a new company that provides oneon-one video therapy with licensed therapists.
Leslie Wise, digital marketing manager for TranQool, said the mission of the mental-health company from Toronto is to increase access to mental health care for Canadians, including Niagarans, by providing affordable care without any commuting or wait times.
“We’ve been around in the market just over a year and a half,” she said.
“We’re an online counselling platform, so we connect you with licensed psychologists and registered social workers (for) therapy sessions through secure video calls.”
Wise said the company follows all of the privacy and health regulations that anyone in person would have to follow.
She said TranQool was founded by Chakameh Shafii, who is the company’s chief executive officer, as well as two other mechanical engineers.
Wise said Shafii was working as an engineer with a large company and was dealing with “a lot of per- sonal anxiety.”
“She sought help from a cognitive behavioural therapist, which is the type of therapy we at TranQool provide, and it changed her life.”
She said Shafii began to promote the importance of therapy to friends and family, and “kept hearing” how it can be unaffordable or inaccessible for someone “who works 9-5.”
“They would have to take off time from work to go see someone, and just not knowing how to find a therapist in general, and that’s kind of how the idea for TranQool was born.”
Wise said TranQool is ideal especially for people in smaller communities where there might not be a lot of therapists, or where patients may personally know the therapist in their area, so they might not feel comfortable speaking to them about their issues.
She said even if resources are available, there’s “generally a very long wait list to see someone, whereas you can see someone in as low as 24 hours on TranQool.”
“This allows you to see people if you’re based in London, Ontario, or Niagara Falls region — you can see someone who works out of Toronto.”
Wise said it’s a simple process to create an account on TranQool. com.
“They’ll go through a short questionnaire where we ask about how they’re feeling and their preferences and based on that we match them with therapists who fit their profile, and they can do their schedules and book all from the comfort of their home.”
Shafii said TranQool has dealt with more than 3,000 patients across Ontario during the last year and a half.
“It’s growing faster than we would have expected.”
She said it’s unfortunate there’s a need for a company such as TranQool, but “we love what we do.”
“We don’t really like wait lists. We believe that wait lists are understandable to some extent, but sometimes people’s lives are being taken away from them by themselves.”
Shafii said therapy is not necessarily a bad thing and it’s not something only the mentally ill can have access to.
“I think as a country and as a province … we’ve come so far that parents (are) referring their kids to therapy, friends referring their friends to therapy. It just means that we have … progressed and we’re at a point where it’s OK to talk to someone about things that aren’t going well.
“It’s very normal that we’re getting help professionally instead of just talking to our friends.”
Shafii said TranQool is a mar- ket place, so the therapists are not actually hired by the company.
“We have therapists in Windsor, in Ottawa, in London — all across Ontario,” she said.
“The way we work is they actually just fill in hours within their calendar that they’re not currently working, so someone might be working at a hospital and they just leave their afternoons with us.”
Shafii said at any given time, there can be 30 active therapists who are accepting clients.
“As a whole, it’s almost 60 therapists who are currently providing services.” rspiteri@postmedia.com Twitter: @RaySpiteri