A Letter to the NOCD Team:
Dear NOCD Team,
Shortly after seeing results from doing Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) therapy, I fortunately was able to carry on with my life. The swing from being at rock bottom to being back on top in a relatively short amount of time pushed me to realize that treating OCD was an operational issue at its core, not a clinical one. That is to say that our healthcare system wasn’t doing a good enough job identifying people with OCD and connecting them to effective, affordable, and convenient treatment. This problem is what inspired the vision for NOCD.
Fast forward to today:
Thanks to the grit and creativity of our team, NOCD has been fulfilling its mission and offering tens of thousands of people with OCD access to evidence-based treatment that’s more accessible and clinically efficient at scale. As you know, that service is NOCD Therapy.
Inside the NOCD platform, NOCD Therapy members can do live face-to-face video sessions with a licensed therapist who specializes in OCD, as well as get always-on support from peer communities and self-help tools when their therapist isn’t available between sessions.
Almost 1 in every 2 Americans with OCD now can access NOCD Therapy through their insurance as a covered benefit, given the strong clinical outcomes people achieve when doing therapy with a NOCD Therapist. Further, NOCD’s specialized therapist network extends both nationally in the United States and internationally. Before NOCD, only people in select urban settings could access OCD-specialty treatment from a licensed therapist that was trained in ERP.
Though we’ve come far and are proud of these accomplishments, we’ve only solved half the problem as a team so far. Each day, hundreds of millions of people globally still suffer because either they don’t know that the turmoil in their head has a name – OCD – or they are unable to find effective treatment given awareness and cost barriers. That’s why we now need to focus on the other half of the problem: connecting as many people with OCD as possible to NOCD Therapy each month.
Why is this our goal?
Our mission is to create a world where anyone can access effective OCD treatment, no matter where they live or how much money they make. We’ve partnered with venture capital firms and private equity investors to help us scale NOCD Therapy with the promise that it’ll help more people in the future access our effective, affordable, and convenient treatment. Therefore, by becoming a venture-backed firm, we have tied our success as a company to our own mission: NOCD is successful when we solve the OCD problem and can help the 180 million people across the world access effective OCD treatment.
The motivation for our monthly goal is to hold ourselves accountable that we are continuing to make increasing steps toward this mission. Each month, we should be educating more people about ERP therapy to reduce the stigma, partnering with new health plans to make therapy more affordable, and improving the NOCD Therapy experience based on our members’ feedback.
It takes people with OCD 14-17 years on average just to access effective care, which sometimes feels unfathomable. Moreover, during this time period, many people not only receive ineffective treatment, but they receive care that’s actually harmful for OCD. This creates a dynamic where people both have to wait AND suffer.
Further, without evidence-based treatment, their suffering increases over time and can commonly cause people with OCD to develop comorbidities that can be life-ruining. For instance, 40% of people with OCD develop substance use disorders (SUDs) – 75% of whom develop SUDs after OCD onsets. Research also indicates that people with OCD are 10X more likely to die by suicide than others in society.
It shouldn’t have to be that way, ESPECIALLY since ERP therapy and medication are very effective for people with OCD.
That’s why we could make a massive impact on society if we could simply reach all people with OCD as early as possible in their journey. Imagine if people with OCD could get identified within seconds of becoming severe and could get to an OCD specialist’s office for treatment within hours for their first appointment.
That’s why we need to invest in reaching more and more new people every month. The more we grow each month, the more new lives we’ll impact, preventing people with OCD from getting severe, developing comorbidities, and becoming at-risk for self-harm or suicide.
Here’s how we’ll get there.
Being a for-profit digital health company has its benefits when solving the OCD treatment problem. When we enroll new members into NOCD Therapy, help them get better, and keep them healthy long-term, we actually earn profit. These new resources allow us to then invest more capital back into growth, so that we can market more and reach additional new people that need help.
Therefore, when we market in an efficient way, grow our therapist network, and partner with more health insurance companies, we increase our budget to spend on reaching more new people, and to grow our team. Additionally, when we offer an A+ “white glove” member experience, people with OCD stick with NOCD Therapy, allowing us to earn more resources that we can invest back into reaching even more new people each month.
Think of a battery that fuels itself – that’s what we’re building.
What do we need now?
Now, we need your focus on achieving our monthly goal: getting as many new people into NOCD Therapy each month. It’s the last leg needed to ensure that this problem is solved long-term.
The more often we reach our monthly goal, the more new people with OCD that we’ll help each month; the more new people with OCD we help, the more we’ll grow. Then the more we grow, the more new people with OCD we’ll help, and so on. It’s an incredible cycle. Eventually, our focus will enable us to tell people around the globe, “Now, no matter where you live or how much money you make, you can regain your life from OCD’s grip.”
If you have questions, please send me an email or give me a call. Let’s get after it – we need each of you.
Sincerely,
Stephen