March 29: Therapist Directory & Community Launch!

Greetings,

I am excited to announce that we will be launching our professional directory & therapist community this week (likely between Wednesday & Friday). This post is meant to serve as a guide to this update. We will continually add more information here to reflect changes and updates. Please review carefully and makes sure to check the thread for more updates as the week goes on!

As a reminder, we have previously announced this update in this thread by @GlenM. If you are interested to learn more about why we are launching this and how it will fit into the 7 Cups ecosystem, I encourage you to review this thread.

To start, here are a few screen shots of landing pages youll see when the community launches:

The landing page for the directory looks like this:

And the therapist community landing page looks like this:

When you click on the green button, it will bring you to a Therapist signup page!

The signup process to join the therapist community involves:

1) Basic information (name, email, captcha)

2) Public profile: picture, screen name, description, areas of expertise, age groups you work with

3) Credentials - enter your credentials for verification!

Other details about the therapist community:

1) Therapists will be able to PM with adult listeners, and vice versa

2) Forums: The therapists will have a private forum to form their community in, similar to the Listener Only forums. Additionally, you may see them posting in the public support forums. They will reply to threads with a similar tone as listeners. They will not be offering therapy in the forums.

3) If you are a listener who is also a therapist, you will need to create a separate Therapist account. Listener & Therapist accounts are 2 separate entities. (You will need to log in and out depending on the account youd like to have access to.)

4) Members who encounter therapists in the public forum or member chatrooms will be able to send them a limited number of PMs. (For therapists providing message therapy, this will enable each to see if the member & therapist are a good fit. If they are a good fit, the member will then have the option of paying for that therapists services.)

5) Like listeners, therapists will not be able to message members. The initiation must come from the member.

6) Therapist Community Guidelines are the same as the listener community guidelines. Well be tweaking the language on this page to be more inclusive to the therapist community. Please keep an eye out for text changes. To be clear, none of the listener community guidelines will be updated.

7) Therapists in training will also be able to join the 7 Cups therapists community, but will not be providing therapy on 7 Cups.

Information about the Therapist Directory:

1) Not all therapists will be listed in the directory or billing for services; some will simply be accessing an online community just for therapists--the only one of its kind. Its an opportunity for therapists to get support, support one another, and learn from each other. Joining the therapist community also can come with the opportunity to pay for a listing in the new 7 Cups Therapist Directory. This is a way for therapists and clients to connect for traditional office-based therapy and potentially for message therapy (online) as well.

A therapists public profile will look like this (apologies, as this is not the best example! Just a sample of the format and look):

2) The therapist directory will look similar to our current browse listeners page, but will be unique in the following ways:

- You can search by your specific geographic location to see if there is a therapist in your area

- Therapist listings in the directory include offsite professional contact information (if the therapist chooses to list it) and the ability to leave a PM

- Therapists providing online message therapy will not be on-demand/ online right away in the same way that listeners are but will instead commit to a schedule of response to messages, usually agreeing to reply daily to unlimited incoming messages. Members can write as often and as much as they would like, and the therapist will respond with thoughtful, professional, therapeutic responses at least once per day.

Here is an example of what the directory page will look like (note: right now only one therapist is listed on this page, so this image does not provide a complete picture of what the directory will look like):

3) If a member is interested in a therapist's services, they can reach out to them using this contact information.

Note: This is an express exception to the general rule of no offline contact among 7 Cups community members. The rule exists to protect anonymity and confidentiality given that we cannot guarantee safety outside of our platform (learn more about this guidelines here). Because therapists at 7 Cups are not anonymous and because we have their contact information and credentials, they are accountable for their behavior and if they list their contact information, similar to other directory services, it is up to the connecting parties to act within both of their best interests.

Therapists Delivering Clinical Services on the 7 Cups Platform

Messaging therapy is an interactive method for giving and receiving therapy. Allowing users to connect with their therapist from the comfort of home or their personal device allows for dynamic therpeuptic relationships to grow and thrive.

Costs For Connecting to A Therapist:

Members will be able to pay to connect to therapists for unlimited messaging therapy. The cost will be $150 per month ( $37.50) per week. The member will receive asynchronous messaging therapy with their therapist.

If you are a therapist and would like to learn more about the therapist community, let us know by filling out this interest form.