By Barrett White
I think the last time I took an online quiz, it was to see what kind of hot dog I was.
Spoiler alert, I’m a Chicago-style dog.
While these benign online quizzes, first made famous by Buzzfeed, have become popular for passing the time (and escaping from the inundation of celebrity pop culture and political scandals), Houstonian Ryan Schwartz has created one that is actually here to help.
Mental Health Match is a free mental health matching service that pairs prospective clients with therapists in the Houston Metro Area. Schwartz, creator of the site, began conceptualizing Mental Health Match after losing his mother unexpectedly. He was searching for a therapist himself, one who could help him navigate the loss of his mother, as well as his relationship struggles, and other anxieties.
Schwartz started his search aiming to find not just a therapist, but a therapist who would be a good fit for his personality and needs. As a queer man, he also wanted to find someone who would understand his perspective on life and love, without him having to explain the queer experience first. It wasn’t long before he realized how few tools actually exist to aid in such a search. “[When my mother passed], it was a really traumatic time for myself, my family, and her friends,” Schwartz says. “It was the first time I’d ever looked for a therapist, and it was really hard to find somebody. I would find folks, and they weren’t that personality fit that I needed. I got a lot of, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ and I was like, that’s not what I need. I get that from other people in my life. I need something different on a personality level.”
“To layer in on that, I needed somebody that I could afford, who was available, who was taking new clients, and would get back to me,” he adds. “I was just bouncing. I would go to a therapist and be like, ‘This isn’t it.’”
The sentiment was the same among Schwartz’s friends. The search for therapy would sometimes become so overwhelming that many of his friends just gave up. The personality fit, he stresses, is arguably the most important puzzle piece to finding a therapist you can trust and connect with.
One afternoon at a coffee shop in the Heights, Schwartz sat brainstorming with a friend. While he toiled away on Google looking for a therapist, his friend created a dating profile for herself. In minutes, she was connecting with potential loves. That’s when things clicked in Schwartz’s head, and the idea for Mental Health Match was born.
The site works like this: Users must live in the Houston area, or be seeking therapy in the city. Open the site and take a quick quiz (five minutes, tops). This includes the topics you want to talk about (yourself, people in your life, your job, etc.); if you’re interested in taking part in various activities during therapy sessions (art therapy, animal therapy, meditation, etc.); specific traits you want your therapist to have (gender expression, sexual orientation, religious background, language, and race); and finally—perhaps most importantly—the price range you can afford, either with or without insurance. “There’s a lot of stress that comes with living in a city like Houston,” Schwartz says. “[But] there’s a full range of support available. There are professionals in town who specialize in working with nurses and folks who work in the Med Center, or veterans, or even people who have anxiety around rain or flooding.”
To be candid, I am a person with General Depression and Panic Anxiety Disorder. These are my clinical diagnoses. With that in mind, I tested the site to see if I could find a provider in my area. I opened the site in my browser and began taking the quiz that, while all-inclusive, is not invasive or uncomfortable. I ticked all the boxes representing my own troubles and idiosyncrasies.
Though I do, thankfully, have insurance, I answered the quiz as if I did not, in order to reflect the position I was in before my current job, when I really needed help the most. This response also reflects the majority of Texas—this state is dead last in the number of insured individuals in the country, and Harris County holds the most uninsured individuals in the state.
I said I could afford to pay no more than $20 per session. I held my breath and submitted my answers.
Eleven. I was matched with eleven potential therapists in Houston. When I had been really in the weeds with my own mental health, using only online reviews and word of mouth, I was lucky to find the phone number for even one potential match—but eleven? I’m sure others can echo this sentiment.
“Even if you’re not sure that therapy is right for you at this time, I encourage folks to go play around on the site so that you can learn a little bit about yourself,” Schwartz says. “You can learn about the options available to you. It could also be the right fit for a friend or a family member, and I think that helping to get folks to the guidance they need is a true gift.”
Mental Health Match is safe and confidential. This site solely exists to foster the initial connection between patient and provider and does not store any person’s personal information. Confidentiality is baked in: Once a patient decides to take the next steps with a provider, the patient is redirected from Mental Health Match to the provider’s site to continue—providing no personal information to Mental Health Match.
