Counseling in your heart is not a potent medicine, it will take effect immediately after drinking.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “ Zinc scale ” (ID: znkedu).
Author | Xu Wei
“I feel like I’m already seriously anxious now, and I spend every day in self-doubt and self-denial. In contrast to the symptoms that are constantly published, I even feel that I have them all.” Lynn is just one of the many people affected by the pneumonia epidemic.
With the continuous spread of the pneumonia epidemic, some people from the initial panic and fear to peace, and others from the initial disapproval to the epidemic discoloration. The pneumonia epidemic not only endangers the public’s physical health, but also brings sensitivity, tension, fear and other levels of anxiety, which puts a large part of the population under tremendous psychological pressure.
So many universities, provinces and cities related medical institutions have spoken, saying that psychological support, psychological counseling, psychological assistance and other services will be provided to the public free of charge, and a nationwide “psychological epidemic prevention war” has been launched.
Under this circumstance, Yi psychological, knowyouself, psychological counseling, Yidianling and other well-known online psychological counseling platforms in China have also launched free psychological counseling services related to the epidemic.
But are these online psychological platforms reliable? Can they usher in an inflection point for development and achieve a gorgeous turn?
Internet + Psychological Service Demand Bursts
Liu Lin (pseudonym), currently living in a third-tier city in the southwest, is a standard office worker. If it is not the sudden pneumonia epidemic, at this time she has already received a red envelope for the unit and entered the new year. At work.
The pneumonia epidemic completely disrupted her original rhythm of life, especially after her feet were banned at home. The disorder of work and life made Liu Lin feel the pressure. “If you stay at home all day and do nothing, you will think unconsciously. In addition, most of the information obtained from the circle of friends and Weibo is also not very good, so I am particularly worried about whether the high-risk behavior that must be done when going out to buy materials will be accidentally recruited. < / p>
This is not only the worry of Liu Lin alone, but also the collective anxiety of a considerable part of the group since this time.
Guilty expert Gui Bing also pointed out, “With the longer the prevention and control, the greater the internal pressure of the public, the accumulation of negative emotions, and even panic. The biggest panic is the uncertainty of the future development of the epidemic And concerns about the health of yourself and your family. “
When the public has a large-scale stress response such as anxiety and depression due to the epidemic, front-line medical staff and epidemic prevention and control personnel, those with pneumoniaAnd the family members, as well as workers who return to work or return to work in advance, the psychological problems caused by facing the epidemic cannot be ignored.
According to a wide range of needs, many universities, public mental health institutions in various provinces and cities have responded quickly, and they have opened special epidemic lines to provide relevant psychological counseling services to the public.
E-Psychology, KnowYourself, Simple Psychology, E-Ling Ling and other well-known online psychological counseling platforms in China have also launched free psychological counseling services related to the epidemic.
Psychological counseling service line
These online psychological counseling platforms, which are mainly based on “Internet + psychological counseling services”, face a large number of online psychological counseling needs during a special period of time. With their abundant online resources and years of online counseling, Get service experience, follow up related services quickly, and go out strong.
As a result, these originally competitive platforms have generally shown a momentum of harmonious development and go hand in hand-Qimai data shows that platforms such as One Psychology, KnowYourself, and Simple Psychology have recently received multiple downloads Here comes a small outbreak.
Are online psychological platforms reliable?
In the eyes of groups such as Liu Lin who are nervous and more anxious, relying solely on these public welfare aids to relieve their emotions is not ideal. “Maybe you should try more professional psychological help.” And one-psychology, simple psychology, KY and other platforms can provide users with professional online pan-psychological services such as consulting and evaluation.
Zinc scales can be seen through queries. In addition to the daily push of psychological related content, the paid services provided by these platforms at this stage are roughly divided into the following:
First, consultants and users conduct one-to-one paid consultations through text, voice, video, etc., subject to factors such as the training background, consulting experience, and location of the consultants, the consulting prices for different consultants are also different. Similarly, the vast majority of consultants’ prices are 400 yuan to 600 yuan at a time.
Individual consultants charge thousands of dollars
Second, in terms of emotions, intimacy, interpersonal relationships, career planning and other dimensions, to provide users with relevant paid assessments. Compared to psychological counseling, the price of this item is more affordable, mostly at 50 Yuan or less.
Thirdly, we will launch public-oriented psychology courses and professional psychology courses to improve the professionalism of consultants. Course prices range from some thousands to thousands, and others only cost tens of yuan.
For people with strong demand, such as Liu Lin, low-price psychological evaluation can only assist psychological judgment, but they want to be counseled but are dismissed by relatively high prices. It ’s too expensive, and I do n’t know how it works. ”
In fact, some platforms have also noticed that users may have concerns about the price, and they have specially opened pre-communication services for this. For example, on the One Psych platform, the original price was 400 yuan for a voice consultation, and the price was 29.9. Yuan’s 20-minute pre-communication service, but the platform also indicates that this “informal and complete” psychological consultation is difficult to solve practical problems for users.
In fact, even after a complete communication with the consultant, it is difficult to solve the user’s concerns. “The psychological consultation once a week, I have been insisting on it for several years.” A friend with many years of psychological counseling experience told Zinc Scale that psychological counseling is not a potent medicine, and it will be effective immediately after drinking. Whether online or offline, psychological counseling is a very slow process for people who really need it.
In addition, the trial of zinc scale found that as a non-professional, choosing a consultant who can perfectly meet his needs is also a big problem.
If the user has no previous experience and experience in psychological counseling, there is not much effective information output to the consultant in a limited time, and the selected consultant does not make the judgments and suggestions the user needs based on this, it will let the user generate a This consultation feels useless.
In the comment area of such online platforms, there are a lot of comments about “the teacher listened to me patiently, but I don’t know if I can solve the problem”.
In general, psychological counseling is a long-term and relatively high-frequency activity, and participation costs are not low. And “the price is too high” and “the effect is too slow” are the keys to the psychological counseling industry that has never ushered in a real explosion for so many years.
How to make users pay is a problem
Undoubtedly,The need for online psychological counseling is a major development opportunity for these online psychological counseling platforms.
However, online psychological counseling platforms have faced similar situations for a long time. Relevant data shows that, as of September 2019, the annual number of psychological counseling WeChat public account articles has reached 2.17, and the corresponding topic has attracted more than 860,000 users. The “Life Q & A Hall” psychological question and answer product under One Psychology is here. The chain will grow 525% in 2 years.
It can be seen that the public’s long-term psychological needs are indeed many, but this demand is difficult to implement to a specific psychological service. Huang Weiqiang, the founder of One Psychology, summarized it into six words: “Big market, small demand.”
Whether it includes media content, mental health assessment, psychological science popularization courses, and one-on-one psychological counseling services, it is eager to become the one-psychology of the entire ecological service platform; or content-based, also provides online KnowYourself for online and offline courses and activities; or the one-touch spirit that covers psychological testing, psychological information, and psychological courses … The services launched by these online psychological platforms at this stage are far from reaching. To the extent that it meets the actual needs of users-this is also the root cause for many users to make rough judgments on prices and effects.
In this case, how can we seize such a good opportunity and convert the trial users who have been attracted by the free psychological assistance service into real paying users?
“Because there is a large threshold for Chinese people to provide psychological counseling services, this is a significant expense.” Huang Weiqiang has publicly stated that in order to lower the public’s cognitive threshold and price threshold, Yixin has always been Trying to make a change:
Try to develop meditation into a new business; launch a kind of props such as a psychological gravity blanket; open a “shared consultation room” offline to provide consultants and users with a better quality communication space, and also take this Organize activities such as offline psychological salons.
Not only is One Psychology, the founder of KnowYourself Qian Zhuang also has a similar cognition. “If you look at it from the psychological consulting market, it is an incremental market and the demand is huge. We hope to serve people at different levels in this market Need to provide corresponding services. “
From 2017, KnowYourself has been working on MCN, distributing different content on multiple platforms, relying on content for reproduction and redistribution, covering the deep psychological needs of users. In addition to the content, KnowYourself has also started to develop products including knowledge paid products, mutual aid communities and tools, and plans to train a group of its own consultants.
As for one pointLing also publicly stated that it will work hard on diversified forms of cooperation such as new media + social networking, and will fully deploy the B- and G-end markets to serve more users.
In fact, if we consider the massive outbreak of demand as a development opportunity, it is better to consider it as a good opportunity to test whether the development strategy already established by the platform is correct, or maybe the latter It is more realistic for online psychological platforms.
So, can the online psychological consultation platform enter a new stage of development? let us wait and see.