Each month I have been featuring a small business in Jacksonville and how that business has transitioned during the pandemic in order to survive. This month, I am featuring Therapist Aid. It was created by Woody Schuldt, a licensed mental health counselor.
Therapist Aid is dedicated to helping mental health professionals improve their craft by providing free evidence-based education and therapy tools. The organization creates resources with clients in mind — which means avoiding jargon and creating tools that are not only useful in theory but also in practice. Their educational resources for mental health professionals to use during therapy sessions include everything from printable worksheets to videos and interactive games.
About Therapist Aid Founder Woody Schuldt
Woody Schuldt graduated from the University of North Florida with a masters degree in counseling psychology. He then went to work in community mental health centers, treating a wide variety of clients.
Schuldt created Therapist Aid when he noticed there were few easy-to-use online resources for therapists. He had already created a small library of worksheets for his own personal use in his practice as a mental health counselor, so he decided to share them with the world.
See the resources available through Therapist Aid.
COVID-19 and Therapist Aid’s Role in the Changing Mental Health Landscape
In March, when schools, clinics, and hospitals made the sudden transition to telehealth, much of the industry was caught off guard. Many therapists had never heard of Zoom, let alone practiced therapy over the internet. There was a scramble while practitioners learned the ropes and adapted their traditional therapy practices to this new reality.
At Therapist Aid, Woody saw a massive shift in how their resources were being used. In February, their customers wanted printable worksheets for face-to-face sessions. By late March, they wanted interactive activities that could be shared and completed remotely.
At the start of the year, even their computer-based tools were designed with the assumption that the therapist and client were side-by-side, sharing a device. Therapist Aid staff rushed to extend their platform and modify their resources to make them viable for telehealth.
This meant building the infrastructure for therapists to easily send Therapist Aid resources to their clients, adding more detailed instructions to activities, and building digital versions of resources that previously only worked face-to-face.
After a few stressful months, their efforts started to pay off. Mental health treatment had transitioned almost entirely to the internet, and they had managed to keep up. Now, while the transition is happening in reverse—back to face-to-face treatment—they are able to offer a more robust product.
Protecting Their Assets with Copyright Registration
During the course of this transition, Therapist Aid realized they needed to obtain copyright registrations for the materials they were providing to therapists and the public.
Most of the materials they had developed over a period of years were original creations by Woody Schuldt. He did not want people taking his original materials and distributing them without his permission or knowledge. So Woody went through the process of learning about the different types of copyright applications and which ones were best for his original works.
If you are publishing original works on your website and need advice regarding copyright protections, please contact the IP law division at Marks Gray. We will gladly assist you.