This article was created for Propublica’s local reporting network in collaboration with the Salt Lake Tribune. Sign up for Dispatch to get stories like this as soon as it is published.
Utah Legislature The session aimed to be a life coach that harms clients’ mental health, but the law signed by the governor on Wednesday stops prescribing minimum standards or ethical guidelines for the fast-growing profession.
Anyone can call themselves a life coach. This differs from being a mental health therapist and does not require any kind of education, training or license.
In Utah, a state agency has found that dozens of life coaches are promoting their ability to treat mental health issues, even though the majority are not trained or allowed to work as therapists. The state licensors say they file an average of one complaint each month about life coaches.
The new law will tighten existing regulations prohibiting non-authorized therapists from treating mental health conditions. According to Senator Mike McEllell, the bill sponsor, licensors can more easily quote good life coaches and good life coaches by clearly defining that only therapists are permitted.
However, the new law does not specify the money to hire more investigators immediately to investigate potential issues.
Last year, a survey by the Salt Lake Tribune and Propovica showed that about a third of the 43 Utah therapists whose licenses have been revoked or denied since 2010, or the expiration of suspended licenses, appears to be continuing to work in the mental health field. Some people were rebranded as “life coaches.”
McEll said the new law targets life coaches who have lost their therapist license because the state deemed it unsafe to work with patients.
A recent report from the Utah Beanival Health Union found that Utans struggles to get mental health help, primarily due to a lack of available therapists.
Amid that gap, life coaching has emerged as an unregulated alternative, according to Utah’s Specialist License Review. At the request of lawmakers, the state office investigated whether life coaching and licenses should be obtained, and according to a November 2024 report, Utah Life Coach was promoting it using more than 100 titles, including “executive coach,” “relationship specialists,” and “soul source consultant.”
State researchers have looked at online ads for around 220 Utah Life Coaches and concluded that about 40% may be offering treatment. These coaches say they specialize in dealing with mental health struggles, and the state claims their ability to “conquer” their clients’ mental health status.
As part of the review, the state office looked into Utah therapists to better understand the potential risks associated with life coaches. Of the more than 3,500 people who responded, a third said they told at least one client they were causing harm to their life coach.
The state report cited one unnamed therapist who described treatment for a patient who hired a life coach. “Five reported life coaches sent them into an emotional spiral and did not provide the skills to cope with emotional distress, as they “drew deeper into” them into trauma.
Sarah Stroop, a licensed therapist on the Utah Marriage and Family Therapy Association’s Legislative Committee, said the new law is a starting point of “ensure that Utin is receiving ethical care.”
“From the start, our goal was to advocate for guardrails to be introduced so that life coaches do not provide mental health care,” she said.
Famous cases of abuse
Mental health experts and some lawmakers are seeking more surveillance of Utah life coaches in the wake of the famous 2023 conviction of Jodie Hill Debrandt, who is in prison for abusing a child of a life coaching business partner.
Although Hildebrandt was a licensed clinical mental health counselor, she removed the mention of being a therapist from her website and instead sold herself as a life coach some years before her conviction. One of her previous clients previously told the Tribune and Propovica that Hildebrandt had told her that she became a life coach as a way to get around the ethical rules that therapists need to follow. (Hildebrandt’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.)
Kevin Franke, the father of children abused by Hildebrandt and his ex-wife, has defended more life coaches since the two women were sent to prison. He said he believes there should be a state registration where the public can see whether life coaches have complaints about them or whether they have disciplined them so far, and he hopes to ultimately mandate the standards for life coaches, including codes of ethics.
Kevin Franke called for more regulations governing life coaches after his ex-wife and their life coach were sent to prison for abuse of his two children. Credit: Francisco Kjolseth/The Salt Lake Tribune
“I’m particularly interested in life coaches who impersonate therapists as effective and present themselves as a cheap alternative to licensed mental health professionals,” he said.
Last year, Utah legislators came to light the idea of requiring life coaches to obtain a license. This is something other states in the country have not done, but the new law has not taken that action. The Utah Professional License Review Office has found it challenging given the wide range of services offered by License Life Coach and the ambiguity of the titles used.
However, the new law makes it clear that only licensed therapists can present themselves with the skills, experience and training to deal with mental illness and “affective disorders.”
McEll, a Republican who sponsored the law, said he hopes that by better defining what therapists can do by defining them in state law, licensors can more easily punish life coaches who harm their clients.
“Instead of trying to create regulations for life coaching, I portray this fence about mental health and what mental health professionals do to eliminate everyone else,” McEll said.
However, some people question how effective the new law is given given the small amount of money that is likely to be allocated to efforts.
The law creates an enforcement fund that is collected from fines that state licensing departments have problems with people practicing mental health therapy without a license. McEl said the fund signaled the licensors that Congress wanted them to take the issue seriously.
However, previous reports from Tribune and Propublica show that these types of citations are rare and unlikely to generate significant revenue. Over the past decade, the licensing department has cited only 25 people about “fraudulent practices” in the mental health sector, according to reviews of citations and other records. These quotes just over $10,000.
And last year, licensors cited nearly 1,000 people, but according to reviews of quotes published every month, people identified as working in the mental health field were not given one new citation.
Melanie Hall, a spokesman for the Professional Licensing Division, acknowledged that the law does not guarantee an influx of resources, but said that even small amounts of money can fund social media campaigns and encourage the public to report bad behavior. As the fund gets bigger, she said, she could use it to conduct more research and pay to pay for experts to consider complex cases that harm the high public.
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At the same time, some Utah Life coaches say the bill has already gone too far and can limit its ability to support clients.
Heather Frazier, who promotes his expertise as a “parent teen connection life coach,” said at the hearing that limiting the treatment of “interpersonal dysfunction” was risking therapists only and leaving life coaches out of business. Life coaches can help struggling clients who do not have a diagnosed mental illness.
“Without coaching, they have to go to therapists, therapists are already part of our state’s excess, overwork,” Fraser said.
