Like many of you, I have some excellent rideshare stories to share. One in particular that stands out is a time a few years ago when I was in New York. My driver, oblivious to my background and profession, confided in me about the multitude of emotions he faced while dealing with his mother’s long, torturous battle against cancer. He told me about the pressures he felt as the “rock” of his family and explained how he was utterly unprepared for what it would take to uproot his life, tend to his dying parent, and cope emotionally with the loss of his beloved mother. I listened more than I spoke as I observed how the simple act of him sharing his truth—and the deep pain he felt—was clarifying and helpful for him. I can’t say this moment changed much about his situation, but this man needed to be heard, and I can’t help but think about how it helped him, even just for that moment. I also couldn’t stop thinking of how many people he could help, too.
Ridesharing services like Uber or Lyft both use an amazingly intuitive technology platform that tells me all I want to know to inform my decision: who is picking me up, what their car looks like, how much it costs, and what time they pick me up and drop me off (pay attention, health care!). There are around 1 million Uber drivers in the US with Uber having a bit more of the market share than Lyft (approximately 65 percent to 35 percent, respectively). Estimates indicated that Uber has around 5 million drivers worldwide with 93 million active users.
Over one million drivers for 331 million people just here in the US. And these drivers are everywhere. In all communities. The companies have made the barrier for entry to becoming a driver pretty low. In fact, most of what you need to be hired on you likely already have to be able to drive yourself around town. Uber and Lyft do some behind the scenes work by running background checks and other safety checks like making sure you have a good driving record and a car with doors.
Compare these numbers and onboarding process to that of mental health clinicians.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2021 there were 351,000 mental health/substance use counselors, 181,000 psychologists, 25,000 psychiatrists, and 708,000 social worker employed (Important note: Not all of these individuals do direct clinical care). While this seems like a lot, let me remind you that most people continue to declare our country as having a workforce crisis for mental health.
These professionals, at least those who do provide care, are not everywhere in all communities. We know from multiple studies that mental health clinicians are more likely to work in urban settings. We also know that the further away a clinician is, the higher the likelihood that people won’t seek care therefore only adding to ongoing health disparities. And sadly, we have also made the barrier for entry to becoming a mental health clinician pretty high. School is expensive, licensure requires supervision, which sometimes needs to be paid out of your own pocket, and each state is different in the rules it uses to determine licensure eligibility.
This past week on a trip in Florida, a colleague and I were going over our notes for a training we were about to do at a local company. We used the rideshare time to prepare for some of the finer details of the training. Unprompted, the rideshare driver, a young woman in her mid-twenties said to us, “I don’t know what you all are doing, but it sounds super cool and really important. I want to learn more.” My colleague and I had been discussing some training that enabled individuals to better talk to their colleagues about mental health - a theme I have covered a lot here recently. She asked for more information as we hopped out of the car arriving at our destination.
So this got me thinking, and not for the first time, imagine what would happen if we gave these "high-touch” drivers skills to be able to identify and help others in distress. No, I am not proposing that our Uber and Lyft drivers become therapists - quite the opposite, I am proposing that these companies who interface with millions of people a day, better equip their employees with the skills to help when help is needed. We know from the evidence that when we help others, it has a positive impact on our own emotional health and well-being.
I started digging. I found that when you look into these companies, they both have services that provide ridesharing for people who need to get to and from medical appointments. Uber Health is all about using the rideshare service to help patients and families get where they need to go. It allows for a care coordinator (likely an employee of a practice or a system), schedule a ride for the person who needs to come in for care. And even Medicaid has been able to get into the rideshare game for its beneficiaries. That’s pretty cool, and considering how transportation is a huge barrier for a lot of people seeking care, it seems important to address. But to me, this still felt like “care” as usual. Get the person from where they are, bring them to the clinic, and then take them back home. Cut and paste over and over again. It didn’t feel personal or enough of a shift to make a dent on broader issues impacting communities.
I went a bit deeper and found that Uber and Lyft are like other jobs in that it can be stressful to be an employee and hard on your health. First, you are sitting all day (in a car!), which can have its own set of health issues with it. Second, there’s the uncertainty associated with not knowing how busy your day is going to be, how many fares you get, and how nice the people are going to be to you as you share your vehicle with them. Any of these factors alone or combined can be quite stressful. Third, there’s the safety issue or concern about those who the driver might be picking up. Collectively, these issues can impact employee mental health and well-being, which we know impacts performance and overall cost to employers.
And while these issues are important, and these companies should do all they can to take care of their employees mental health and well-being, I keep thinking about what happens if the rideshare community had the ability to be another frontline resource for helping those in need? There’s an unbelievable workforce out there interacting with millions of people daily. Their job is to help get people from Point A to Point B, but along the way, as we all know that there’s often a conversation that unfolds. And for some of us, that conversation holds more weight than if we just got to our destination a couple of minutes early.
Uber and Lyft, I know you all care about mental health as I have seen it in your partnerships and in your own personal stories. Let’s take that interest to the next level, shall we? Here’s a few ideas:
Increase “in ride” resources: How many times have we been in a rideshare when we see some sign, or heaven forbid, some screen six inches from our face that’s throwing all kinds of messages our way? It seems that if we are going to have these intrusive items in a car during our ride they might at least be useful. Mental health and well-being tips > celebrity gossip seems like a pretty simple formula. Further, you never know who might be riding, who is in distress, or who might be looking for a safe place to be. Simple messages that highlight how to manage stress, identify emotional distress in others, or even point to local resources or places to call when you are in need of help can be done tastefully and benefit countless.
Increase driver training: I realize this is a much bigger ask, but why not put each diver through a very simple training on how to recognize when someone’s in distress, what to say, and what to do about it? Sure, not every driver is going to use these skills or even be good at them, but there are some who will be, and for those drivers, their impact on another human being might be the difference that person needs. You are not training clinicians here, but more equipping these folks with basic skills they can use just in case the situation arises. Simple, straightforward training can be done through the onboarding process. There’s a method for how to do this and do it well.
Increase community connections: Every rideshare driver should have a list of names or organizations they know who they can recommend to another person who may be in need. With the resources and geolocation data the rideshare companies have, it’s not likely a challenge to integrate some of these services into the app for the driver to share with the rider. The mental health community also has a role to play here. They should be known by these drivers as a resource, put a face with a name, and offer to be available to those who may want more help. It just seems like there are going to be times when a driver might want to say, “I know someone who can help with that.”
There are so many other applications and opportunities for ridesharing companies. My point here is that millions of people daily will enter and exit a vehicle, interacting with a person they may never see again. These small moments can impact us beyond the simple business transaction and go into our next meeting or into our lives. Why not leverage these interactions to positively impact our mental health? If companies are serious about helping their clients, the user, then they may want to start to think of ways they can address mental health throughout their business model.
Uber and Lyft - who’s first?
Rideshare for mental health
It's interesting to imagine how to be intentional about natural connections. Whenever I start a session with a client I ask how they are. You get the inevitable 'goods,' 'eh,' and 'okays.' The follow up question is always I hear you, describe good, eh, okay to me. It's an interest of mine that people find ways to expand their vocabulary to describe how they are experiencing the world at any given moment. We're often taken in by the first response rather than being curious about what something means when it is said or experienced.
What begins as a trite cultural question about how are you today transforms when we're curious. And, the best part is that I don't all the letters behind my name to ask it. For me, it simply transforms a habitual question into a ritual question, something that's done automatically, but with intention. I like the low barrier of entry and natural connection aspect of this integrative approach. I also wonder if people who experience a caring curiosity on the part of their driver might be more apt to reuse that service over another, impacting the bottom line of said service.
I think we tend to return to the places that we feel care for us, favorite restaurants, stores, communities. Becoming a favorite space takes effort and a long view over short-term thinking. With all the dollars spent on marketing, I wonder if some of it, allocated toward community building and connection would be better spent on these initiatives. I wonder how many drivers etc. could be trained for the cost of a Super Bowl commercial.
Thanks for this! I have my taxi driver's license and have often thought about finding brief authentic connections along the way. Once, as a passenger, I took to asking drivers, "If you could tell the world one thing, what would it be?" (a la Jewel song Hands) and the answers were unexpected to say the least. The most memorable was "Don't eat cheesecake from a restaurant! You wouldn't believe the things they put in there!" :) As with all things, our mileage may vary. I'm going to start telling clients about the woebot app I use. It's a free chatbot available 24/7 with multiple choice answers, so you don't even have to think about your response if you're in the throes of blah depression.