California paid millions to access a mental health app. It wasn't safe for users.

On a late spring day in 2019, Mimi Martinez McKay, then deputy director for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, saw that a user on Twitter, the platform now known as X, had been tagging the county in posts that made alarming claims about the safety of 7 Cups, a popular emotional support platform. 

7 Cups, which operates as both a website and app, invites teens and adults to talk to someone online for free. Users give and receive emotional support, but they are discouraged from acting like a therapist. 

The year prior, the county had agreed to provide 7 Cups access to residents as part of a five-year, $101 million initiative known as Tech Suite that was designed to use innovative technology to connect California residents to mental health help. Some of these adults, who were clients of local departments of mental health, had complex behavioral health needs and were highly vulnerable. They lived with serious mental illness and may have experienced homelessness, substance abuse, and domestic violence. 

The Twitter/X user making claims about 7 Cups belonged to the platform's teen community and went by a pseudonym on both platforms. The user claimed that a teen friend also on the platform had been manipulated into sharing child sexual abuse content and material with an adult user outside of the United States. McKay, who said she controlled the department's Twitter/X account, was appalled by the claim. 

This story is part of our investigation into the emotional support platform 7 Cups and the growing marketplace for apps and platforms that pair people with someone who is supposed to be a compassionate listener. The series explores a failed experiment between the state of California and 7 Cups, as well as the myriad risks of seeking emotional support online from strangers. These dangers can include the manipulation of vulnerable youth and targeted abuse and harassment. The series also includes an analysis of why it's so hard to stop online child exploitation, and looks at solutions to make platforms safer.

What happened next was never publicly detailed by California officials in charge of the initiative, despite multiple public evaluation reports written about the initiative. The incident in L.A. County factored into the abrupt termination of 7 Cups' contract with the state several months later, according to sources with knowledge of the events. By the end of 7 Cups' contract, the company received an estimated $6.7 million.

The California Mental Health Services Authority (CalMHSA), which contracted with 7 Cups to provide some state residents with access to the platform, told Mashable in a statement that, "After the initial phase, it was determined that the services, tools, and processes used by 7 Cups did not meet the needs of the target populations for the project."

In fact, CalMHSA ultimately reached a settlement with 7 Cups after its CEO, Glen Moriarty, disputed the contract's termination. That settlement, which Mashable obtained through the Public Records Act, contained a confidentiality clause prohibiting either party from disclosing the settlement's existence, terms, and provisions. The clause had a few exceptions, including if disclosure was necessary to comply with applicable law, rule, regulation, or policy of a governmental agency, like the Public Records Act.

As part of the settlement, 7 Cups paid CalMHSA $460,382 to satisfy its "financial obligation" to the agency, and CalMHSA paid the company $309,277 as "consideration."

Though the settlement agreement did not identify the reasons why 7 Cups' contract had been terminated, an investigation conducted by Mashable found significant concerns regarding trolling and inappropriate comments, including unwelcome sexual and explicit language, as well as a nontherapeutic discussion of child sex abuse on the platform. 

In one unrelated July 2018 criminal case that Mashable reviewed, a 42-year-old Butler, Pennsylvania, man named Anthony Joseph Smith posed as a 15-year-old boy to gain access to 7 Cups' teen community. He met a 14-year-old user and coerced her into sending him child sexual abuse material of herself. Her parents learned of their communication and alerted the authorities. Smith was jailed in 2019, but California officials awarded 7 Cups its contract prior to the criminal acts and appeared to have no knowledge of the case. 

Still, the University of California, Irvine, was paid by CalMHSA to evaluate Tech Suite. Its public reports make little mention of safety issues related to 7 Cups, and do not explain why the company lost its contract. Dr. Dara Sorkin, a principal investigator and professor in the school of medicine at UC Irvine, declined to review fact-checking sent by Mashable or answer questions related to Tech Suite. CalMHSA declined to comment on whether it prohibited the UC Irvine researchers from including detailed safety concerns in its public reports, though the settlement's confidentiality agreement may have effectively barred the researchers from addressing them.

David Loy, legal director of the California-based First Amendment Coalition, reviewed the settlement for Mashable. Loy, who is an open government litigator, noted that CalMHSA didn't violate the law by including a confidentiality agreement in the settlement, because it did not prevent the agency from disclosing a copy in response to a public records request. 

However, the clause impaired the public's ability to know what transpired and hold the agency accountable by effectively forcing the public to request a document that it didn't know existed in the first place, according to Loy. The clause also included stipulations that CalMHSA had to notify 7 Cups prior to disclosing the settlement, which could allow 7 Cups to sue to stop the document's release.

"I think it's a very bad thing," Loy said of the confidentiality clause. "I don't think government agencies should ever be allowed to do this."

Dr. Matt Mishkind, a researcher who studies technological innovation in behavioral health as deputy director of the University of Colorado's Helen and Arthur E. Johnson Depression Center, said the failure to disclose issues or negative outcomes in a project like California's may lead to further user harm, if consumers are never informed of the possible risks of using a platform. Mishkind was not involved in Tech Suite or familiar with it prior to speaking to Mashable. 

The lack of transparency also denied academia and industry the opportunity to learn from critical mistakes in the rapidly growing market of mental health apps. In recent years, a number of emotional support platforms have launched, including Wisdo Health, HearMe, and Circles. 

"When public dollars are used, part of what we learn should be in the public good, and when it's not, then why isn't it?" McKay told Mashable. 

As venture capital funds and investors pour tens of millions of dollars into products with the noble intention of offering free or affordable emotional support to vulnerable people, and employers and insurers look to bring them into their portfolio of behavioral health offerings, California's experiment with 7 Cups prompts serious questions about user safety.

To reconstruct what happened, Mashable reviewed meeting agendas and minutes routinely made publicly available by the Mental Health Services Oversight & Accountability Commission, a body that reviews billions of dollars in mental health spending; quarterly and annual evaluation reports of the project; and government correspondence, invoices, and internal documents and meeting minutes related to the initiative, obtained through public records requests submitted in 2019 and 2020 by Cal Voices, a nonprofit advocacy organization. Mashable also interviewed several individuals familiar with the project's execution, who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss their experiences or had signed a nondisclosure agreement with 7 Cups. The documents that Cal Voices received in response to its public records requests did not include the settlement, according to the group's executive director, Susan Gallagher.

These events, which have not been previously reported in detail, offer yet another cautionary tale about the risks of leveraging unregulated digital technology to solve some of the thorniest problems in the mental health delivery system.

"A great opportunity" 

The Innovation Technology Suite Project (Tech Suite) initially featured two apps: 7 Cups and Mindstrong, a now-defunct platform that aimed to use artificial intelligence and digital biomarkers to predict the onset of mental illness. 

Both had a persuasive and powerful ambassador in Dr. Thomas Insel, the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) from 2002 until 2015. He left the NIMH and joined Verily, an Alphabet precision health company. Insel then served as Mindstrong's president, and as an advisory board member for 7 Cups when both companies were awarded their contracts, according to a 2018 report published by the state. 

In February 2017, Insel, then at Verily and a 7 Cups advisory board member, made a presentation that included information about the emotional support company in a public meeting to the Mental Health Services Oversight & Accountability Commission, which reviews certain streams of taxpayer funding earmarked for mental health interventions, including for innovation projects. Insel told Mashable that the commission invited him to make a presentation about innovation, and that he was never part of 7 Cups outside of agreeing to be an advisor. At the time, Insel's daughter was employed by 7 Cups as its director of clinical initiatives. 

A few months later, members of the commission participated in a daylong meeting at Google-Verily headquarters to explore innovation in the mental health sector, according to three stakeholders who attended or knew of the event. 

Unlike a typical commission meeting wherein stakeholders have an opportunity to review materials in advance and comment on specific mental health programs or proposals, this invite-only gathering was focused on broader discussions about innovation. One participant recalled breaking into small groups of "innovation incubators" in order to create prototypes of apps they might use. 

By October 2017, the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health presented to the commission a proposal for a multi-county innovation project to "work with one or more technology companies with experience with virtual mental health care platforms." Among other goals, the project aimed to improve access to mental health services and boost social connectedness. The proposal explains that planning for the initiative began in June, after the commission's gathering at Google-Verily. 

The state quickly put out a request for proposals. By spring 2018, both 7 Cups and Mindstrong were selected as the only two vendors for a three-year $35 million initiative. (Tech Suite was eventually renamed Help@Hand and its budget increased to $101 million as more counties joined.)  

Financing for the ambitious effort came from a so-called millionaire tax levied on high earners. Approved by voters in 2004, Proposition 63 was designed to generate revenue for mental health prevention efforts and treatment. The funding allocated through Prop. 63 varies from year to year, depending on state revenue. It's estimated to raise $3.4 billion in the 2023-24 fiscal year. Historically, counties had been required to spend 5 percent of the revenue on innovative approaches to mental health, like Tech Suite. If, after a period of time, counties did not use their innovation funding, it would go back to state coffers for distribution to other counties.

In March, Californians passed a proposition designed to overhaul how Prop. 63 dollars are spent. There will no longer be a mandate for innovation, and counties will be required to spend two-thirds of the tax revenue on housing and round-the-clock services for people who are unhoused and experiencing mental illness.

When 7 Cups received its Tech Suite contract, the company's founder and CEO, Glen Moriarty, celebrated the news in a platform forum on June 18, 2018. He shared that the platform would be focused on supporting foster youth, new mothers, high school students, members of the Deaf and hard of hearing community, and those already receiving mental health care. 

"What I love about this is that, not only will we be able to reach more people in California, this partnership will bring extra resources for 7 Cups," he wrote. "It will give us a great opportunity to improve the 7 Cups website and app, fix bugs more quickly and hire new team members. Well [sic] be able to provide better all around care to everyone around the world." 

Shocking safety issues on 7 Cups

Before 7 Cups was terminated from the project, it received an estimated $6.7 million over 13 months to help Californians in populous and rural counties, including Los Angeles, Orange, Kern, and Modoc, connect with someone who was supposed to be a compassionate listener, according to Cal Voices' analysis of financial data from the documents obtained via a public records request. Ideally, the service would help people, particularly rural residents, feel less isolated, and improve their mental health and emotional well-being.  

Yet what occurred as the project unfolded was far more complex, and troubling. 

Prior to viewing the tweets that made concerning claims about 7 Cups' safety, Mimi Martinez McKay, of the L.A. County Department of Mental Health, had already independently developed her own reservations about the platform after testing it earlier in the year. 

"In my own experience as a user of 7 Cups, I did not feel that the people were professional," McKay told Mashable.

She also worried that L.A. County residents wouldn't be able to easily access a list of local resources where they could receive more formal help, including therapy. 

McKay reviewed the tweets, which included allegations that an adult 7 Cups user had groomed a teen user of the platform for a romantic relationship. 

McKay exchanged emails with the X user, noting to them that "we take these concerns you've shared with us very seriously." Mashable reviewed documentation of the correspondence and verified the identity of the anonymous user. 

Mashable couldn't vet the specific claim of online grooming presented in the tweets because the user being referenced as a victim was anonymous. However, a separate Mashable investigation into 7 Cups identified key lapses in the platform's approach to safety, like the ability of banned users to quickly return to the platform using burner accounts and regular experiences of harassment and abuse, along with multiple anecdotal reports of concern that adult users were attempting to groom minors. 

McKay believes she shared the claims directly with a state official overseeing the initiative at the California Mental Health Services Authority, or CalMHSA. She recalls that the agency took the claims seriously. The state documents obtained through a public records request by Cal Voices appear to substantiate McKay's account of alerting CalMHSA to the incident on X. 

Invoices submitted to CalMHSA by Murphy, Campbell, Alliston & Quinn (now Quinn Covarrubias), the Sacramento-area law firm it consulted on matters related to Tech Suite, show charges related to discussions of safety on 7 Cups, held in the days after the anonymous tweets were posted. 

McKay, who was fired by the L.A. County Department of Mental Health in 2020, settled a wrongful termination suit against the county in 2022. McKay partly attributed her termination to questioning department practices, including some related to the Tech Suite project.

What California officials didn't tell the public

This wasn't the first time that CalMHSA or its lawyers fielded concerns related to Tech Suite and 7 Cups. 

While issues had been raised in late 2018 and early 2019, the situation escalated in April 2019. A group of staff and contractors in the participating counties had been testing 7 Cups, according to documents obtained through the records request and to sources familiar with the process. The testers messaged with other users and participated in public chat rooms. Some of those testers were disturbed by what they encountered, according to sources with knowledge of their concerns.

The testers noticed inappropriate handle names and profile photos. Some received unwanted sexual messages. Bad actors name-called and taunted people engaging with the platform. Inappropriate behavior allegedly included descriptions of sexual fetishes and domestic violence. One tester reported being asked to trade photos of feet for sexual gratification. Some of the testers messaged with users who requested to meet in person for a sexual encounter. Mashable reviewed documentation of these concerns.

One tester reported messaging with a 7 Cups user who described a hypothetical act of child sex abuse in graphic detail. Mashable confirmed the details of this incident with sources who were familiar with what happened. 

Almost none of this appeared in the quarterly and annual public evaluation reports produced by UC Irvine. These documents provided the only thorough public accounting of the project's progress.

In a quarterly report that covered September 2018 through February 2019, the researchers briefly recommended that 7 Cups "vet listeners more carefully." The evaluators themselves documented a user who used a Confederate flag as a symbol, but that is the only detail included as an example of poor listener quality. 

By April 2019, Kern County, home to the central Californian city of Bakersfield, discontinued use of 7 Cups, according to the county's report on the project, which was obtained via Cal Voices' public records request. 

That report noted that Kern County felt 7 Cups was a "poor fit" for its community. Some of the county's mental health clients had histories of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and other types of trauma. The report noted multiple frustrations with the app, including: concerns about the "quality" of listeners; "unmoderated chat rooms, unmoderated listeners"; and difficulty "screening out dangerous folks" from becoming listeners. Additionally, the county was concerned about endorsing the app without solving these safety issues. 

Though the UC Irvine researchers were in regular contact with Kern County officials during this time period according to its own reporting, these problems were omitted from their quarterly evaluations. 

When 7 Cups was terminated from the project altogether, in August 2019, it merited only a single-sentence mention in the quarterly report, with no acknowledgment of the alarming safety problems that had surfaced. In their annual report, published in February 2020, UC Irvine researchers again omitted why 7 Cups had lost its contract with the state. The researchers did not go into detail about safety concerns. 

Sources familiar with the factors that contributed to 7 Cups' contract cancellation, who asked to remain anonymous, told Mashable that safety issues were critical, in addition to concerns that the company was failing to implement counties' demands for specific features quickly enough. 

Some of those sources also noted that California officials, including those at the county level, had naive or unrealistic expectations of technology and the platform, and didn't understand how long it takes to iterate new ideas. At the same time, county officials believed 7 Cups offered a specific type of high-quality peer support, and were frustrated to learn that it largely did not, according to sources familiar with their experiences.

Moriarty told Mashable in an email that he was not made aware of the concerning safety issues identified by the county testers, and that the company ultimately built the desired functionality into the platform. 

"I regret that we were not able to serve the counties in the way we had envisioned," he said. 

Even commissioners who served on the Mental Health Services Oversight & Accountability Commission were puzzled by 7 Cups' abrupt removal from the project. 

In the only public meeting on Tech Suite's progress, held in Sacramento in February 2020, commissioner Dr. Itai Danovitch said that he held the project to a "high standard" and asked whether it was "on target," according to the meeting minutes. 

"One of the challenges in answering this question is that every presentation on this project has been completely different," Danovitch said, in the minutes' summary of his comments. "There are some things that were significant elements of past presentations, such as 7 Cups, that have disappeared with no explanation."

Another commissioner asked the meeting's presenters to confirm that 7 Cups was no longer part of the project. At this point, CalMHSA had agreed to the settlement with 7 Cups and was beholden to its confidentiality agreement. The commission was not a party to the settlement, according to its executive director Toby Ewing.

Jeremy Wilson, program director and public information officer at CalMHSA at the time, confirmed that 7 Cups wasn't a vendor. He explained that "it was determined by the counties that the peer chat product was not going to fit the need for the counties on this project," according to the minutes. He also noted that the company had chosen not to apply for a second round of proposal requests issued in September 2019 to identify new products for the initiative. 

Tech Suite was never put on a commission meeting agenda again, despite efforts by advocates to revisit the topic. Ewing told Mashable that the commission will not consider putting Tech Suite back on the agenda "at this time" and that the body was focused on "pressing needs" like school mental health and strengthening suicide prevention strategies.

Susan Gallagher, executive director of Cal Voices, was one of the advocates who asked the commission to revisit the initiative. She told Mashable that Cal Voices and other stakeholder groups had long raised concerns about Tech Suite with the commission on issues like safety, privacy, and usefulness to consumers. The nonprofit made its first public records request about Tech Suite in 2019, and submitted two requests in 2020 to obtain additional documents.  

In a January 2022 letter to the commission, Gallagher urged the body to "seriously assess the outcomes and budget" of the initiative. Before speaking with Mashable, Gallagher was unaware of the more serious safety concerns that emerged after testers used 7 Cups. 

"It's not really that surprising to me, although it is very devastating to think that could've happened to vulnerable people who we were supposed to be helping," she said. 

Dr. Matt Mishkind told Mashable that the failures to fully disclose the concerns over 7 Cups deprived consumers the opportunity to better inform and protect themselves from harm on the platform, or other similar platforms, of which there are now several. 

Mishkind added that state officials had an ethical obligation to inform the public. 

"When it's paid for with taxpayer dollars, I think there should be transparency there. People should know why something, especially something pretty big, did not work, and also what the recommendations and solutions are to it," said Mishkind. "I think that's how it should work. I don't know that I'm so naive to say that's how it works." 

What happened at 7 Cups

In a non-public report submitted to county leadership in 2019, Moriarty acknowledged that the company had to address safety concerns. He described moving from a "reactive approach" of using a list of keywords that triggered human flagging and censoring of inappropriate content to "far more advanced monitoring." The company reduced access for "guest" and "unverified" users, or people who created an account without using an email address to sign up for the service. 

7 Cups also began using a "suspicion-scoring mechanism" in conjunction with "trust scoring" to detect and sanction behavior associated with acting in "undesirable ways."  

"We continue to run experiments now to balance the tension between making it too difficult for people to get help, while also increasing their safety," he wrote. 

Mashable's recent reporting on 7 Cups indicates that some of the same problems continue to plague the platform. Users who exhibit trolling behavior can still access the platform, even after they've been banned. Last summer, one such user told some members to kill themselves, according to a source familiar with current safety issues on the platform. 

Moriarty told Mashable that the company "continuously" improves safety measures and that there were fewer related challenges than five years ago, when 7 Cups' contract was terminated. 

Moriarty's tone in the 2019 report was optimistic: "We believe we have a lot of important work to do and appreciate the honor of continuing the work we started." 

7 Cups received a 30-day notice of termination of its original contract on Aug. 31, 2019, according to minutes from a September 2019 leadership meeting attended by the county representatives and CalMHSA staff. 

The settlement with CalMHSA went into effect a few months later, on Nov. 1. At the end of October, Moriarty laid off 10 members of 7 Cups' staff. The decision blindsided and shocked the affected employees, according to sources with knowledge of the events.

In a 7 Cups forum post on Nov. 6, Moriarty announced that "we had to let some people go." Though he'd previously posted about the California initiative, he made no mention of it in his announcement. He did, however, note that the sitewide cost-cutting included shuttering unmoderated group chat rooms, for safety reasons. 

Likely anticipating disappointment from users who'd become accustomed to accessing chat rooms at any time, Moriarty tried to appeal to a sense of unity.

"If this is where you want to be and you are open to our attempts to increase safety while also surviving the challenges of a startup, then we have each others [sic] backs and will steer into problems together solving them one at a time," Moriarty wrote.

Despite the 7 Cups failure, the state of California hasn't given up on digital mental health products that incorporate some form of peer support. In January, the state's Department of Health Care Services launched access to an app for 13- to 25-year-olds called Soluna. Users can sign up anonymously to access, among other well-being features, moderated forums where they can "post a question, get or give advice, or just chat about whatever's on your mind."

What to learn from California 7 Cups' experiment 

Given that the public never learned specifically why 7 Cups lost its contract with California, the company has not faced any widespread criticism or fallout.

That same year, however, Moriarty launched the nonprofit 7 Cups Foundation "to support expanding access to quality, affordable, and innovative mental health care through volunteers, clinicians, and technology" with a sizable donation from the nonprofit, California-based medical system Sutter Health that the 7 Cups Foundation ended up returning in 2020.

Moriarty said the funding was meant to provide education for new mothers. The foundation paid $450,000 back to Sutter Health, which Moriarty said occurred after John Boyd, the organization's former CEO for System Mental Health Services, requested the remainder of the unspent funds. In 2018, when 7 Cups received its contract to serve California counties, Boyd served on the state commission that approved funding for the project. Sutter Health declined to comment on the matter.

As for 7 Cups users, some have continued to anonymously share their own negative experiences on the platform, which include alleged trolling and abusive behavior. 

When Mashable asked Moriarty about some of these complaints in February 2023, prior to learning about Tech Suite, he noted that the platform's massive size and reach meant negative experiences were bound to arise. 

"No matter how hard we try or the changes we make, ultimately people are people and they make mistakes and/or behave in unhelpful ways," Moriarty wrote in an email, adding that the same can occur with licensed professionals. "Humans — licensed or not — can be messy." 

The failure to disclose what happened with 7 Cups has also meant less scrutiny for similar startups. 

Wisdo Health, a competitor to 7 Cups that counts Dr. Insel as an advisor, struck a deal last year with a Colorado mental health nonprofit to make the platform available to adults in the state. A press release announcing the partnership said there would be a particular emphasis on reaching the state's Medicaid members. 

Though Mashable didn't learn of serious safety concerns related to Wisdo Health during the course of reporting, it did find that the industry at large hasn't resolved or even made clear to consumers the risks of using emotional support platforms. 

Nor is there evidence to indicate that such platforms are as good or better than other mental health interventions, like therapy or even computer-based cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of treatment that can help people better manage their thoughts and feelings. 

Still, the Department of Health and Human Services included Wisdo Health in a list of resources for improving social connection, a clear sign that power brokers take the model seriously. 

UC Irvine's lack of transparency has had ripple effects, too. 

In January 2023, the UC Irvine researchers, including Dr. Stephen Schueller, published a paper on their work evaluating Tech Suite in the journal JMIR Formative Research. The authors made a brief mention of safety issues, but without naming 7 Cups. The paper included an acknowledgment that CalMHSA "reviewed the manuscript to ensure its confidentiality."

The authors recommended chat forum monitoring of bullying and abuse.

"[S]ervice providers also shared concerns about inappropriate web-based interactions that could take place on peer support platforms and chat rooms; one of the service providers stated, 'But these chat rooms are not monitored, and so anyone can pop on and say a number of horrible things, and no one’s there to monitor that behavior. And we didn’t know that,''' the researchers wrote. 

Until last summer, when it shut down after losing its funding, Schueller led One Mind PsyberGuide, a nonprofit website designed to help consumers vet digital mental health tools. The PsyberGuide's review of 7 Cups contained no safety warnings, but does note that one of the app's target audiences is adolescents. The app received a 3.64 credibility rating out of 5. 

A 2022 study on using mental health apps for distress during the pandemic selected 7 Cups as one of its interventions partly because it was "highly rated" by PsyberGuide. Schueller told Mashable in an email that while he could not comment on 7 Cups and Tech Suite, any safety warnings would have been reflected in the PsyberGuide's transparency rating, which was not conducted for 7 Cups. "So nothing involved in our credibility review would speak to safety issues," he wrote. 

Insel and Moriarty told Mashable that they hadn't spoken to each other in years. Insel's daughter left the company in May 2019.

Together, Insel and his daughter have since founded Humanest Care, along with Twisha Anand, the former head of operations at 7 Cups. The startup offers mental health tools, courses, and counseling services, primarily on college campuses. Insel has described the company as "building an online community empowering people to get help and give help."

Insel wrote in an email to Mashable that he didn't know about 7 Cups' settlement with CalMHSA, acknowledging that, at the time, "there was less awareness of how online peer support could become toxic."

He added that he believes the U.S. needs a regulatory infrastructure for digital mental health or, at the very least, best practices so an agency like CalMHSA will know how to rigorously evaluate a digital mental health company.

"I don't know what happened with the [T]ech [S]uite in CA," Insel wrote Mashable, "but there should be some lessons learned."

If you are a child being sexually exploited online, or you know a child who is being sexually exploited online, or you witnessed exploitation of a child occur online, you can report it to the CyberTipline, which is operated by the National Center for Missing Exploited & Children.