As the war continues between Ukraine and Russia, many Ukrainians both close to the conflict and abroad face a number of challenges. While many international employers are offering what support they can from abroad, there’s only so much one can do from thousands of miles away.
One virtual mental-health company is offering support to Ukrainians. Sesh, a San Francisco support group provider, has partnered with BigCommerce, Bravado.co, Zencastr and Virtasant to provide Ukrainian employees with free access to the platform’s 150-plus virtual mental health group support sessions.
“Lack of connection with those of similar cultural identities and experiences in the workplace directly leads to employee churn — Sesh solves for this,” Sesh CEO and founder Vittoria Bergeron said in a statement. “We offer therapist-led support to Ukrainian employees for the same reason we support any other group: connection with others in your shoes is powerful, healing, and difficult to find elsewhere.”
The company was founded after Bergeron’s own experience with group therapy. She credits the community and support she found in an intensive outpatient group for her recovery from an eating disorder. Finding similar groups for processing life’s challenges outside of traditional mental-health services isn’t easy or affordable, though. Bergeron wanted to bring the life-changing benefits of group therapy to the masses, which led to Sesh launching in 2019.
Today, Sesh offers virtual group processing and therapy sessions through HIPAA-compliant Zoom meetings. Each group is capped at 10 attendees, led by a licensed therapist and vary in focus from “Living With Anxiety” to “Inner Child Healing for People of Color” to “War & Conflict: Stress and Anxiety.”
Attendees have the option of either paying per group at $30 a session or subscribing monthly for $60, which gives members access to Sesh’s entire catalogue of topic-specific sessions.
“[Sesh is] something our users can sustainably afford week over week. If you saw a therapist one-on-one once a week for a month, that could be $200 or more. You end up having to be a millionaire in order to make that work,” Bergeron told Built In in an interview, adding that, for the cost of one individual therapy session, Sesh users can get access to unlimited group sessions. “Sesh allows you to weave in a new and important support system that isn’t directly reliant on one-on-one therapy that is so expensive — even with insurance,” Bergeron said.
Sesh also works with a number of employer partners to offer its sessions as part of a company’s employee benefits. Sesh membership is subsidized by the employer, giving workers free access to Sesh’s offerings.
“During these difficult times for many of our members located in countries affected by the war in Ukraine, Sesh has represented a great way to support our team members from a mental-health perspective, especially by trained and specialized psychologists,” Virtasant HR Lead Carolina Jacob said in a statement.
Bergeron told Built In the company group sessions made specifically for employees affected by the war in Ukraine was a direct ask from Sesh’s employer partners. Not only do Ukrainian employees have access to war-specific groups, they can also utilized Sesh’s entire platform as part of their benefits package.
“This is not just some sort of kitschy new benefit,” Bergeron told Built In. “This is a must-have. It’s the future of employee benefits.”
