I've been with BetterHelp for a few years up until I could not afford it anymore due to an unexpected financial hardship. I've been in therapy for a very long time until my therapist retired and I struggled to find another. My signup to betterhelp was in part curiosity and part stop gap until I find another therapist.
I was assigned an LCSW which at first made me very skeptical but I went along with it. I was told that I could request a new therapist to be assigned at any time. There is a long questionnaire you answer online when you sign up. That information is used to find the best fit for a therapist. Some of their staff have extensive academic backgrounds and others, like mine, are more like social workers.
You are assigned a single therapist and it is not some anonymous group of therapists. That therapist also has a backup therapist and other resources to consult. However, you always communicate with the assigned therapist. Most of my correspondence with her was done in a "forum" or "chat" like web-based session. Allows the therapist and I to correspond and share documents/material privately. During my time with the service, I was very busy and this passive way of therapy was helpful. I found myself periodically (almost daily) posting in the service and she would respond usually within 24 hours. I am very comfortable working online and work in the tech industry. So this felt fairly normal to me. Even in my current job, I have a dozen of employees whom I mainly communicate with passively via Slack. I certainly can understand that this type of communication may not work for everyone. So that should be considered. Their primary form of communication with the therapist is passively through a private chat.
Periodically, I also had direct one-on-one phone sessions with my therapist. These sessions were also helpful. Provided the human aspect and the immediate interaction with a person provided the immediate feedback on various things that I wanted. You do have to schedule these sessions on their website. They are not just available on call at any time. If you have an emergency, they also provide a number but I never used it.
The LCSW and I built up a very good routine and connection. I think it helped that I had already been in in-person therapy for many years. My experience was good and I found her very helpful. She also made herself available for a direct phone session which my wife could also attend.
My real experience with in-person therapy is that it is very very difficult to find a therapist that you click with. Better help isn't going to solve that problem. You may need to keep requesting another therapist until you find one you are comfortable with. I guess I was just lucky that I got along with the first therapist assigned when I joined.
During my time with betterhelp, I also noticed they were expanding their service offerings very quickly. They introduced schedule group sessions which are conducted via phone conference and moderated by a therapist who runs the sessions. They are focused sessions on a specific topic.
Just as I ended my subscription, they also extended their services to include children. I would surmise there are special considerations in these for the parent's involvement. Maybe also a group specialized therapists with education in child development.
That was my experience with them... probably ended a year or so ago. I am considering signing up again. Part of the reason is that I think my new medical insurance plan covers online therapy sessions now. Unfortunately, I discovered that there is no way to reconnect with a previously assigned therapist and my account was purged from their system; meaning all our correspondence is probably in the trash bin. So signing up again would mean starting over. I was mindful to cut and paste much of it for my own personal reference.
A thread i started when I was considering the service has some good advice:
https://www.city-data.com/forum/ment...therapist.html
Also back when I initially signed up, BetterHelp was pretty much the only service in this space. There are several now and I may look into their offerings as well.
My elder son is currently seeing a in-person therapist. Granted he is an actual psychiatrist but it costs about $200 a visit. That is out of reach of a lot of people... so I see these online services as a viable alternative.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Not my experience. My public sector employers normally offered access to EAP counseling services (some number of free sessions in order to clarify and assess the problem, followed by a referral to a different counselor with specific expertise if the problem wasn't resolved) as a paid benefit. OK the sessions didn't take place over the web, but I don't see how much difference that would make. I've taken advantage of employer EAP services several times over my career. Can't recall any of the counselors ever suggesting I should or shouldn't stay in my job of the moment. The closest one might have gotten to advise quitting was to suggest that running away from troubles doesn't usually work out as well as building better skills to face them. IME the job on its own probably isn't the root cause of whatever mental issue I'm seeking counseling for. It just happens to exacerbate it.
