How Good Website Design Decreases Mental Health Stigma
May is Mental Health Awareness Month; a time to raise awareness and reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness and mental healthcare. While we’ve come a long way in reducing stigma and normalizing therapy, mental health professionals are still grossly underpaid and many therapy-seekers still struggle to find the right therapist for them.
We’ve still got a long way to go.
One of the biggest reasons I started Hold Space Creative was to help therapists and therapy-seekers connect without unnecessary barriers. I saw the way outdated, poorly designed websites turned clients (myself included) away from qualified, competent therapists, and I knew there had to be a better way.
The truth is: your website can either help potential clients feel supported, understood and validated, or it can perpetuate the stigma that we’re working so hard to eradicate.
In this post, I’ll explain how good website design can decrease stigma around mental healthcare, and I’ll give you concrete action steps to ensure your website is a part of the solution, not the problem.
Good website design helps therapy-seekers feel accepted, seen, and understood
One of the biggest hurdles in reducing the stigma around mental healthcare has been a belief that something is “wrong” with you if you ask for help. That folks who go to therapy are “sick,” “broken,” or “crazy”.
Of course, those of us trained as mental health professionals know that these beliefs are false and harmful, but since many people reach out for help when they’ve hit rock bottom, there’s often lots of shame involved in the process of finding a therapist.
Therapy-seekers are desperately seeking to be understood, and when they see website after website with the same clunky, outdated, cluttered design characteristics, they may start to believe, “Nobody understands what I’m going through,” perpetuating the deeper belief, “Something is wrong with me.”
Contrary to popular belief among therapists, your private practice website isn’t simply a place to list your services, credentials, and contact details. First and foremost, it’s a place to connect with potential clients and meet them where they are, in order to help them feel accepted, seen, and understood.
The environments (whether they be virtual or physical) that we curate for our clients set the tone for how clients feel.
Think about your office. Creating a warm, inviting space for your clients is key to helping them to process, open up and experience growth. If your space feels unwelcoming, sterile (think doctor’s office), or off-putting, this may be a barrier to clients opening up and could leave them feeling isolated, alone, and like something is wrong with them, thus perpetuating stigma. The same goes for your website. If your virtual “home base” is warm and inviting, it sends the message “you are welcome here as you are right now”.
Stigma-fighting action steps:
Make sure your website has a consistent color palette that resonates with your most ideal clients (Hint: if your website colors weren’t intentionally chosen for you or by you, they may be missing the mark). Feeling uncertain about choosing a color palette? Read more on this post.
Include photos and images on your site that offer “visual validation” - photos and images that communicate, “I see you and understand you.” (Hint: stock photos of rock stacks or sunsets probably aren’t going to do the trick, here.)
Use a unique website layout that goes beyond the traditional therapy website. Remember, it’s about creating a warm, inviting space for your specific clients. Everyone has a different definition of what “warm” and “inviting” means, so don’t settle for the status quo. Go above and beyond to show your future clients that you’re here to hold their unique experiences. My therapy website templates are a great place to start.
Good website design helps normalize mental health struggles
As you know, a big part of healing the shame around mental health struggles is normalizing them. Helping people feel less alone is something you do every single day in client sessions; your website could be doing the same thing, 24/7, on your behalf.
Again, offering a virtual environment that feels warm, inviting, and helps website visitors feel validated is the key. When potential clients see a boring website layout that they’ve seen 100 times before, colors that don’t resonate with them, and/or they struggle to find what they’re looking for, they’ll wonder, “Maybe I’m the only one experiencing this.”
Words play a huge role in normalizing mental health struggles and decreasing stigma as well. Convey to clients through the copy on your website that they are not alone, and validate them asking for help.
Stigma-fighting action steps:
Use language that your potential clients would use: Connect with those visiting your site so that they can hear a part of themselves in your copy.
Avoid overly clinical language. This leaves clients feeling distant and can perpetuate the idea that there is something that needs fixing.
Have a clear and concise mission statement (I help ____ do ____). Let your potential clients know right off the bat if you’re a good fit to help them. Minimizing confusion, overwhelm and uncertainty in the process of seeking a therapist is important to decreasing stigma around therapy/mental health (Hint: use my Website Copy Templates if your website isn’t connecting with visitors the way it should).
Share a bit about yourself and your own experiences to connect with your potential clients, and again, convey that they are not alone. Not sure how much or too little to share? Check out my blog post on self-disclosure on your website.
Good website design humanizes therapists
As much as we all wish the following weren’t true, therapists are seen to many as impersonal, disconnected, and difficult to trust - further perpetuating the stigma around seeking mental health support from a licensed professional.
If that pill was hard to swallow, this one’s going to be harder: much of this perception of therapists is therapists’ own doing. While we’d love to blame inaccurate portrayals in movies or media (rightfully so), the belief that therapists have to be “blank slates” and draw strict boundaries around themselves can translate into a large, insurmountable gap between therapist and therapy-seeker.
Most therapists I talk to recognize the value in approaching their work from a “human first” perspective, yet many therapists are still uncomfortable with including pictures of themselves on their websites, or sharing small pieces of personal information, or breaking the mold in terms of their website design and branding.
The fact is, therapy-seekers will assume that the experience they have on your website correlates to the experience that they’ll have on your couch. If you’re a “human first” therapist in session, but your website visitors have to search to find a picture of you and can’t get a sense of your personality, they’ll assume that you’re yet another “blank slate” therapist.
Stigma-fighting action steps:
Include several professional pictures of yourself (and your other clinicians if you own a group practice) on your website. Reject the idea that your pictures “have to look” a certain way; the best thing you can do is to make sure your pictures represent you and your authentic personality.
Use words and phrases in your website copy that you use in real sessions. The more your website copy sounds like you, and less like a generic therapy website, the better.
Invest in personalized or custom website design. One of the best ways to ensure your website looks and feels like you is to work with a professional designer who understands the work that you do. Interested in working with me? Learn more about 5-day website design.
Good website design makes therapy desirable
To truly end the stigma, we have to change the conversation. Instead of the messaging that “therapy is nothing to be ashamed of,” we should be saying, “therapy is cool.” In fact, social media campaigns like #therapyiscool have already started to change the conversation.
Stepping up your website design and branding is one of the best ways to change the conversation and destigmatize mental healthcare. Having a professionally-designed, inspiring website signals to your potential clients that therapy with you will be different - perhaps even “cool.” It shows that you take a modern approach to therapy; instead of the “blank slate” approach of the past, you’re here to help your clients heal, grow, and transform in today’s world.
So much of how any field or profession is perceived by the general public is in how they present themselves to the people they’re trying to help. Since so much of our decision-making and research happens online these days, it’s so important that therapists present therapy in a relatable, desirable way.
Stigma-fighting action steps:
Make sure your website design is modern, easy to navigate, and matches your personality. If you’re not sure where to start, take my free personality quiz to find out how to design for your personality.
Upgrade your branding. Your fonts, colors, pictures, and logos work together to create a visual brand identity for your practice. One of the quickest ways to step up your branding is with a new logo suite.
Upgrade your website design. Use one of my Squarespace therapy website templates to upgrade your design at a fraction of the cost of custom design.
Use your website to end the stigma
Your website is one of the first points of contact new clients will have with you and your practice. It says a lot about you, your personality, and your therapeutic style, and it also says a lot about your views on mental health. Whether you’re aware of it or not, your website is playing a part in the stigma around mental illness and mental healthcare; it’s up to you to make sure your website is a part of the solution rather than the problem.
When therapists recognize the power of their websites, not only in terms of their practice growth, but in terms of the perception of therapy in general, respect for the field grows and the therapy search process becomes easier. This is why I started Hold Space Creative, and this is why I’ll continue to offer products and resources to help therapists rebrand and destigmatize psychotherapy and counseling so that more people can get the help that they need.
