Is Your Healing for Sale?
The Ethics of Marketing Mental Health
Lately, I've been monitoring a growing trend that I find ethically troubling: the use of psychotherapy language—particularly trauma-informed principles—repackaged purely as a marketing tool for sales.
One such example is the phrase “Trauma Informed Sales System,” which packages therapeutic concepts into a strategy designed not to foster healing, but to drive profit. While it may sound compassionate on the surface, what lies beneath is far more problematic. It reflects a broader shift in how mental health knowledge is being commercialized, repurposed, and commodified in service of capitalism.
At its heart, trauma-informed care was developed to create safety, trust, and empowerment for those with trauma histories—especially in healthcare, education, and therapeutic settings. These principles require careful ethical attention to power, informed consent, and emotional boundaries.
But when these same principles are transplanted into the world of sales, something critical gets lost. The intent is no longer to reduce harm; it’s to increase conversions. The goal is no longer to support a person's agency, but to lower their defenses—to make them feel seen, validated, and safe enough to say yes to a purchase.
In that shift, the ethical line is crossed. It becomes manipulation—manufactured consent disguised as care.
This is part of a wider issue in our profession: therapeutic methods like EMDR, DBT, and even “parts work” in IFS are increasingly marketed like consumer products. They’re pitched with the same intensity and polish as toothpaste or tech: faster results, better outcomes, breakthrough solutions. Mental health techniques are competing in the attention economy, stripped of their clinical context and ethical frameworks.
The harm here is subtle but profound.
When we treat human suffering as a market opportunity, we risk exploiting vulnerability instead of respecting it. We confuse the safety of the therapy room with the manipulative safety of a sales pitch. We offer the illusion of care—without the ethics, training, or containment that real care requires.
And perhaps most concerning of all, we erode public trust in what trauma-informed care—and psychotherapy itself—actually means.
What Responsible Marketing Looks Like
Some may argue that marketing therapy makes it more accessible, helping people find the care they need. And yes, responsible outreach can play a role in reducing stigma and expanding access.
Ethical mental health marketing focuses on education rather than persuasion. It might explain what DBT or EMDR actually involves—the skills taught, the time commitment, the collaborative nature of the work—without promising miraculous transformations. It describes a therapist's training and approach transparently, without using clinical language to create false intimacy or urgency. It respects potential clients’ autonomy by providing clear information that helps them make informed decisions, rather than using psychological techniques to bypass their critical thinking.
But when the line blurs between public education and psychological manipulation, we must pause. Access doesn't justify exploitation. Therapeutic language shouldn’t be used as clickbait.
There’s nothing wrong with professionals communicating clearly about what they offer. But when therapeutic language becomes part of a gimmick, we must ask: are we still serving people—or are we simply selling to them?
What We Can Do
As mental health advocates and professionals, we have a responsibility to protect the integrity of the tools we’ve been entrusted with—not to brand them, not to exploit them, but to use them wisely, humbly, and ethically.
For practitioners: Consider whether your marketing language serves your potential clients’ understanding or your conversion rates. Ask whether you're using clinical concepts to inform or to influence.
For consumers: Be wary of mental health services marketed with urgent language, promises of quick fixes, or therapeutic jargon designed to make you feel instantly understood. Authentic trauma-informed care doesn’t need to announce itself as a shallow sales tactic—it shows up in how you’re treated throughout the entire process.
Caveat Emptor.
I work in physical therapy, but anytime insurance is used to cover a healthcare service in the U.S.A. — we have to remember that it’s a healthcare marketplace! It’s for profit. So regardless if you are shopping for a knee replacement or a series of talk therapy sessions—we have to think of ourselves as consumers buying a healthcare product. Unfortunately. I feel like my patients and the public often “forget” or don’t understand this side of our American healthcare system. It’s a business! 😓
I just learned that there’s a term for the overuse of trauma: "trauma-informed washing".