The trend: Mental health visits account for the majority (62%) of all telehealth claims, per FAIR Health tracking data. That continues the shift from in-person to online psychotherapy, also known as talk therapy, which began out of necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How we got here: Psychotherapy visits shot up during the pandemic years, according to a new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Almost 22 million US adults received psychotherapy by 2021, increasing 33% over the three-year study.

Telemental health is a bright spot: Telehealth utilization overall has come down from its pandemic high and subsequent period for most clinical specialities outside of mental health.

• Endocrinology, obstetrics and primary care virtual visits lag mental health telehealth visits by 15 percentage points or more, per Epic Research.
• Telehealth accounted for 6.7% of clinical encounters across all specialties in February 2025, down from 7.1% a year ago and 7.8% at the end of 2022, per Epic.

Key stat: We forecast that the number of telemental health users is expected to climb to almost 72 million in 2028, up from fewer than 64 million last year.