So long, and thanks for all the experience

After 16 incredible years helping to lead Kooth Digital Health and pioneering digital mental health support for young people, it’s time for me to move on.

When I joined Kooth in 2009, the world looked very different. Barack Obama had just taken office in the US, and in the UK, New Labour was reaching the end of its tenure. At the time, NHS mental health provision for young people was almost exclusively reserved for those who met stringent criteria—a situation even more pronounced than it is today.

Kooth had already been operating for five years, founded by the visionary Elaine Bousfield MBE and initially backed by the Labour government’s ‘spend to save’ initiative and public health programmes. The conversation around children’s mental health was only just beginning to gain traction.

I started my journey with Kooth as a volunteer counsellor and later became employee number 17 (today, Kooth boasts a workforce of around 600). Before joining, I had grown disillusioned with the reactive and late nature of acute mental health care. I was captivated by Elaine’s approach: stigma-free, easy-access online mental health support commissioned by the NHS and offered free to those in need. I was also drawn to the complex problem of how to navigate user value; scaling through digital; and achieving business goals - all through using the practice wisdom of psychotherapy.

A serendipitous twist of fate led me to Kooth. The same week I interviewed with Elaine, I also interviewed with Terry Hanley at the University of Manchester to join his MA counselling cohort—unaware that Elaine was already working with Terry to build an evidence base for digital mental health support. I dived in to help.

Beyond research, I was driven to help ‘sell’ Kooth. The pitch was clear: rising mental health needs among young people, overwhelmed CAMHS services, and we provide an obvious solution to scale support for digital natives - it was more ‘introduce and embed’ rather than sell. However, in the early days, scepticism ran high—from concerns about online therapeutic relationships to outright accusations that we were a danger to children.

My first major win was securing Kooth’s inaugural ‘remote’ service in Cornwall, where I had recently returned home to roost. I inherited an in-house counselling service and 40 volunteer counsellors—I cut my teeth stepping up to a complex challenge in service transformation.

Once stabilised, there was more for me to do than manage a service.? Supporting Elaine on the UK conference circuit, and tirelessly engaged with Foundation Trusts and commissioners, we were embedding Kooth within the national and local systems. A pivotal moment came in 2013 when Sir Norman Lamb , then Minister for Care, championed our work in the Future in Mind report, advocating for digital mental health support across England and Wales. This report, initiatives like the National Lottery’s HeadStart programme and enthusiastic commissioners who carried Kooth with them into new roles all fueled our national growth.

By 2016 I was thriving as Director of Business Development, expanding Kooth into the South East across the Midlands and Wales (despite the long commute from Cornwall!), presenting on national and international stages, and building our sales team, working alongside the best people manager I ever worked with, Jan Clitheroe .

Despite my commercial role, my core passion remained: scaling quality mental health support. Recognising the need for greater evidence, and frankly, tiring of the sales role, I proposed and took on the role of Research Director. I built a dedicated and wonderful research team, with Charlotte Mindel and soon after, an insights function to harness data-driven learnings, and our first data science team with the brilliant Ellen Howard .

One of my proudest achievements was leading a collaborative effort to develop Kooth’s Theory of Change—a logic model blending clinical expertise, academic rigour, and social policy frameworks to create something that would stand the test of time.? My eternal thanks to Professor Miranda Wolpert for pushing me to do this. After this our research flourished. Partnering with the 英国伦敦政治经济学院 on the first full scale independent evaluation of Kooth, then developing a Health Economic Outcome model with the York Health Economics Consortium .

Our insights uncovered a key trend: most young people sought and benefitted from single-session therapy. Rather than viewing this through a deficit lens (did we make your problem less), we embraced an asset-based approach (did we help you build strengths), capturing their goals and achievements with tools like our Counselling Goals System (CoGS) and an incredible achievement the Session Wants and Needs Outcome Measure (SWAN-OM), working with my amazing research team Louisa Salhi PhD Santiago De Ossorno Garcia and others, then validated with the Anna Freud Centre, now being adopted by other services.

By 2022, restless as ever, I took on my final challenge at Kooth—leading the Product team alongside Research. The goal was clear: to embed evidence at the heart of product development.

This would have been an exciting challenge enough, but then, everything changed.?

Kooth had already entered the US market, but then secured a groundbreaking contract in California to build and deliver an app for the entire state’s youth population. Working with our brilliant teams led by the Head of Product, Katherine Middleton , Head of Product Design, Timothy Salter-Hewitt Head of User Research, Georgia Sugarman , and the world-renowned IDEO team, we researched, designed, and launched Soluna —a beautiful, user-centred app embodying principles to achieve psychological flexibility in young people.?

Soluna is now available to the whole youth population of California, and is becoming a trusted brand supporting teens across the whole state. What we have built there is genuinely a gem to behold.

So after 16 years, out-tenured still by Kooth counsellor Emma Pearson (Go Emma ??), I leave Kooth with immense pride and countless cherished memories. I will deeply miss the wonderful opportunity I had to hire some amazing people, and build bonded and successful teams.

I wish that Kooth continues to thrive under new CEO Kate Newhouse, CMgr CCMI and stays true to its mission—giving young people what they want and need as they navigate life’s challenges. Also I hope it stays true to its roots in psychotherapy and its human centric values: remembering it is the relationship that heals as it meets the triple challenge of: scaling mental health services for all to access; the power and potential of ethical AI; and ever restrictive mental health budgets.

For your delectation, here's 5 things I learned about digital mental health support along the way:

1. Focusing on what users want and need achieves the dual goals of scaling access, AND proving effectiveness
2. Digital is well placed to provide full wrap around mental health support from prevention and early intervention to care navigation.
3. There will always be detractors, but focussing on core values will help transform the system eventually
4. Mental health needs are not straightforward or cookie cutter, and digital is well placed IF it keeps user voice and need at its heart
5. It's easy to look good, but to do good AND look good you need all of the above!

Looking ahead, initially I’m returning to my first love—psychotherapy practice, and a new one, breathwork. I’m excited to integrate these approaches and my growing interest in the transpersonal, tantra and consent into my private practice. I want to help people become more embodied and find deeper meaning in themselves and their relationships. I am excited to develop this practice in (even) closer partnership with my beloved wife Rosa Sefi , who has been an ever loving and insightful force for me throughout my time at Kooth.? It almost goes without saying that I could not have done any of this without her.

I am still deeply curious about how to scale quality therapeutic support and make it accessible to all. I am drawn to initiatives like family constellation work and circling, as well as community support offerings to help men overcome ever present societal challenges like Man Down UK , and The ManKind Project.

I also remain committed to supporting evidence based youth mental health support in any way I can contribute.? Please do get in touch if you want to talk about this.

To my incredible colleagues, collaborators, and friends, (everyone not mentioned here -I hope you know what you mean to me!) — so long and thanks for all the experience of life’s rich tapestry. Here’s to more to come.