My Totally Unbiased, Honest Review of BetterHelp

I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder. For years I tried to ignore it, convinced I’d grow out of it or grow into it, so to speak, but as the years wane on and I gain more and more responsibility, the anxiety just shifts, it never fully goes away.

That’s why last year, after seeing all of those big-eyed guys and gals in the BetterHelp ads plastered all over my Facebook and Reddit feeds I decided to sign up and see what this online therapy thing is all about. Here’s how it went and what I learned about seeing a therapist from home.

Oh, and by the way - I'm not sponsored by or affiliated with BetterHelp in any way. I wasn't given any type of compensation to write this review, I just felt like the internet needed one by a person who wasn't getting a kickback for using the service.

Online Therapy

Just like in-person therapy, with an online platform like BetterHelp, you’ll speak with a therapist who specializes in mental health conditions like phobias, panic attacks and disorders.

How Does it Work?

To start, you’re going to go through a short screening process and the first question will be if you feel you’re a harm to yourself or others. If that’s the case, you probably won’t be accepted to platform, instead you’ll be directed to your local emergency room.

If you indicate that you are NOT a harm to yourself or others, you’ll enter the website to get matched to a counselor. From platform to the platform, this process might vary. On BetterHelp, they asked me questions like:

• Did I want a counselor with religious leanings
• Did I want a counselor that was experienced with the LGBTQ+ community
• Did I preferred a counselor of the same sex
• What my specific mental health concerns were

After giving that initial information, which took just a couple of minutes to complete, I was matched with a counselor. I was asked to provide my matched counselor with even more information that included questions and criteria like:

• My age

• My gender identity

• A quick screening for depression and other mood disorders (questions included how often I feel down or hopeless, any recent appetite changes and how well/often I sleep).

All of this was done in my “counseling” room.

How My Therapist Got to Know Me

After reviewing my initial screenings my therapist began to communicate with me in the virtual counseling room. Here, she would send messages asking me questions about my childhood, my current struggles, my mental health history and any concerns I might have (like how my dad is bipolar and one of my siblings has a personality disorder) to help her narrow down her best approach for making sure I benefit from therapy.

She sent me even more screenings to see if I have any bipolar tendencies (which the TOS specifies they can not help me with), since it can be genetic, and even screened me for OCD at my request. In the first week we exchanged several emails each day as she got to know me.

Getting a Diagnosis

Within the first couple of weeks, my therapist had ruled out a lot of things and narrowed in on some obvious concerns, finding that most likely, I have and have dealt with since childhood, Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

It’s nice because now when I’m filling out forms at the doctor or even just trying to navigate life, it helps me to have a name for this thing and it helps other providers, from my dentist to my GP to know how best to treat me based on this GAD diagnosis.

Seeking Help for a Life Event

Now, you may not be looking to online therapy for any kind of diagnosis. Maybe you’re going through a hard time, like a job loss or the loss of a loved one and you want to talk to a qualified counselor to keep your mental and emotional health steady. Or maybe you already know you have seasonal affective disorder and you’re simply looking for support to help you stick to a routine - online therapy is great for those things too, you don’t have to go into it hot and heavy looking for someone to fix you like I did.

Something that’s really cool about online therapy is that I stay in touch with my therapist daily. I can email her whenever I want and if she hasn’t heard from me in a few days she’ll message me to see how I’m doing.

I can also schedule “live” sessions and the options for these are:

Live Instant Message Chat

This is best when you're in a situation where you may not feel comfortable expressing yourself verbally. Maybe you're squeezing in a session on your lunch break or having your therapist talk you through in the waiting room of your oral surgeon.

Phone Call

So far, I almost always pick a phone call, that way I’m not adding stress to myself trying to clean up my home office but so I’m still getting a more personal way to talk with my therapist besides just chatting through instant message.

Video Session

Video calls can be done on any device with a camera. I've done these a couple of times and they're helpful in that sometimes the best way a therapist can assess how you're doing is by taking a visual survey of you.

Apart from our weekly live sessions and daily email correspondence, my therapist can also assign homework or informational sheets for me to do. This helps her guage where I’m at and how to handle certain events like a panic attack or a negative social encounter. For the most part, these resources are rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy (or CBT) techniques.

When there isn't any assigned homework for me, I work in this CBT workbook and then snap a picture to send to my therapist. It's a book that you can do on your own or work in tandem with a licensed therapist on. From there she'll use my answers to challenge my perspective on certain situations or negative thoughts.

What I Like About BetterHelp

Full disclosure, I’ve never seen a therapist in person, so I have nothing to compare this experience to but I can say that this has been way less scary than I thought it was going to be.

Because, I mean, outside of the fear I feel thanks to my anxiety disorder, I also think most people would agree that it’s kind of uncomfortable to bare your most embarrassing stuff to a complete stranger.

That’s one of the best things about BetterHelp - you’re not just diving in, in-person and dealing with all of the social anxiety that comes from that. Instead, you have a level of control over the interactions and what you share, when.

9 Things I Love About BetterHelp Vs. Traditional Counseling

1. You can proof-read your message before you send it to make sure you’re not just babbling and focus on the things that are really bothering you, like say, panic in the grocery store checkout line or feeling sad every time you get off the phone with your mom.
2. Therapists only have a limited amount of time they can spend on you, online or not. Online gives you the advantage of spending your time together wisely.
3. How easy it is to choose how I communicate with my therapist. I love that when I’m busy I can just email or chat with her and that during the duller, colder months we can video chat and it gives me good reason to do my hair that morning.
4. I can switch counselors. I don’t WANT to switch counselors, but if I did, the option is right there in my platform, easy peasy. No calling up an office and cancelling appointments, no searching for a new therapist.
5. The platform is customized to ensure you’re matched with a counselor who suits your needs and does all of the vetting for you. That means that instead of culling through Google trying to find a local therapist near my home who fits the criteria that’s important to me (female, non-religious, specializes in mood disorders) and then calling their office to see if they’re accepting new clients, BetterHelp does this for me in just a few minutes.
6. I didn’t have to wait for an appointment. If I were seeking an in-person therapist, I might have to wait days to weeks to even longer to actually meet with one. That’s because I’d need to pick from the limited availability in my area and go by their schedule. The truth is, when I was looking for a therapist, it was because I really needed to talk to someone right then. Within just a couple of hours of signing up, I was talking to my therapist. What a relief!
7. Using an online therapy platform ensures that there are checks and balances for your counselor. This is so cool to me. As stressful as the idea of a ratings and review system can seem, when it comes to the person aiding me in my mental health journey, I appreciate that they’re held accountable by a company whose name depends on the success and quality of their therapists. If I were to visit a private therapist locally, and felt like things weren’t working well for me or the therapist wasn’t high quality, or worse, somehow harmful, who could I even go to in order to remedy that? This is a way to receive help from therapists who are regulated and continually assessed.
8. I have social anxiety! Having access to a therapist from a place where I feel comfortable is imperative to me actually following through with seeking therapy.
9. They offer financial aid. If your income is under a certain level (likely dependent on your tax status in each individual state) you'll qualify for a subsidy. Personally, I get a discount of about $35 per week off from the original cost.

Now that I've been using the platform for a year, there's some stuff I don't dig about it, like:

• They really push surveys on you. I frequently receive surveys within the app asking me to review my therapist. I understand that this is an attempt to hold counselors accountable and measure whether or not they should be on the app at all and I think that's smart but I also hate the idea of people's jobs hinging on arbitrary surveys. The first time I was prompted to take one, the survey wanted to know if I'd been feeling down in the past two weeks. I had been, because of circumstances outside of my control. It seems like the platform could have used my answer to decide that my therapist wasn't doing their job properly when really they have no control over my mood, they can only encourage me to keep a healthy perspective.
• It's pricey. All therapy is pricey and I'm not going to get into my frustrations with the state of healthcare in America, however, with my particular disorder it's very helpful for me to see a therapist long term and BetterHelp won't take my insurance.

As much as I appreciate BetterHelp and online therapy in general, there are drawbacks.

Here’s what you need to remember about seeing a therapist online:

• They can’t help you if you indicate that you’re suicidal. In this case, they’re going to direct you to your local emergency room. This is for your own safety.

• It’s not on-demand. Yes, you’ll receive way more communication than you would with an in-person therapist, but this is still not an on-demand service.

• An online therapist can’t assess your physical state. This might not seem important but I do believe that with some disorders, it’s good for a therapist to be able to assess your physical state to be able to give you the best help possible. Unless you video chat regularly, they won’t be able to see if you’re displaying weight loss or weight gain, if you look like you haven’t slept much recently or if you’ve bit your nails down ‘til they’re bleeding.

Is online therapy free and if not, how much does it cost?

No, online therapy isn’t free. I don’t know what other services cost, but through BetterHelp I’m paying a couple hundred per month for therapy. This is including a special discount based on my income.

Remember, an in-person therapy session will also usually be offered on a sliding scale and one session typically costs somewhere north of $100.

In my area, an in-person therapy session is around $95. So, considering this, I’m saving several hundred dollars per month by utilizing an online platform.

Is BetterHelp covered by insurance?

No, BetterHelp is not covered by insurance.

What is the Deal with Philip Defranco and BetterHelp?

Back in the fall of 2018 the teletherapy platform ran into controversy regarding their use of “celebrity” endorsements from YouTubers like Philip Defranco. These YouTubers would create sponsored (meaning they were paid by BetterHelp) videos about their experience with the service and some of what they said didn’t actually jive with BetterHelp’s terms of service, including that BetterHelp is not meant to treat complex disorders like Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder.

These terms of service also stated that the company could not guarantee a counselor’s abilities and this raised a lot of red flags. Here’s the thing, TOS are there to cover a company’s butt. It doesn’t mean there’s a bunch of quacks hanging out on the platform, it means BetterHelp’s lawyers put a lot of legal jargon into their Terms of Service.

Think of it this way, unlike with local in-person counseling, you can’t ask your friends if they’ve had a good experience with the counselor you’re thinking about seeing because BetterHelp matches you to a counselor (you don’t pick your counselor) and this counselor will likely be regional, not local. The wording of the terms of service protects them from complaints from users who don’t like the counselor they’re matched with.

What should you do if you don’t like your counselor?

Switch counselors. You can switch your counselor any time on the BetterHelp platform.