Ubertherapy - by Elizabeth Cotton (Hardcover)

About the Book

UberTherapy is the essential guide to the rise of digital therapy for anyone working in, researching or using mental health services. This book offers a roadmap to preserve real therapy in an increasingly digital world.

Book Synopsis

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. Analysing the deployment of e-commerce business models, this book makes a compelling case that the rise of 'therapeutic Tinder' allows would-be clients to sidestep the deep, 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.

Review Quotes

"This book offers a fresh and thought-provoking contribution to the ongoing debate about mental health in the workplace and more generally. The author, who possesses a unique blend of experience as both an industrial relations academic and practitioner, has extensively engaged with mental health issues in her recent work... This book examines the impact of the new technologies and their ever-changing role in influencing aspects of contemporary life. It explores the economic and psychological dimensions of this emerging industry... The book is written as an academic text but is accessible to practitioners working in mental health. It is based on an extensive analysis of these new online developments and the context of change within the world of counselling",

Miguel Martínez Lucio, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2025; 0:1-2.

"Uber Therapy 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 is the therapist's therapist - the people's therapist - teaching 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 & former CEO of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

"A must-read for all therapists right across the professional field, spurious hierarchies and all. Democracy, free expression, intelligence and passion radiate from every page. Simply the best defence and championing of 'real therapy' in the face of a plethora of cheap substitutes, whether the state organised juggernaut or rapacious free enterprise offered on a retail basis. And clients and patients might also want to see what they are getting themselves into these days. Over the last years, Elizabeth Cotton has emerged as the best chronicler of what is wrong in the therapy world - and also a beacon of hope that things might improve. The style of writing is punchy and humorous, and I hope the book gets the readership it deserves", Professor Andrew Samuels, author of The Political Psyche and former Chair of the UK Council for Psychotherapy.

"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

About the Author

Elizabeth Cotton is Associate Professor of Responsible Business at the University of Leicester and the founder of Surviving Work which carries out socially engaged research about mental health and its relationship to work. She has worked extensively with health teams and trade unions and has worked as a psychotherapist in the NHS. Elizabeth runs The Digital Therapy Project, a group of UK and US researchers and practitioners interested in understanding future therapies from both sides of the therapeutic relationship.