How does it work? Betterhelp Emoji…
After filling out a questionnaire to establish what specific flavour of psychological you are, you’re paired with a counsellor, who you can mercilessly switch for a various one at any time. (I got Dr. Laura Dabney, from Virginia). You then begin an instantaneous messaged treatment session that both you and your counsellor can drop in and out of, and which could, in theory, go on and on up until among you eventually died.
What does it cost?
You get a totally free seven-day trial – much like a complimentary Netflix or Amazon Prime trial, other than with way more questions about what your childhood was like. After that, it costs from , 24.50 a week for endless message-based counselling and one ‘complimentary’ phone session with your counsellor monthly. Yeah, I don’t get how it’s free either, but whatever.
How much is BetterHelp monthly?
If you find the idea of baring your soul to a stranger a bit awks, filtering that through instant messaging might be valuable. You will not get the same connection just like in person counselling, however the semi-anonymity may make it easier to open if you have actually been consuming 2 bottles of rum and dancing around in your dead nan’s bridal gown every night.
She initially determined the scale of my anxiety, what activates it– social scenarios, meeting people for the very first time– and then dived headlong into my fractious youth (divorced parents, stretched familial relationships, bullied in junior school). She was pretty nosey tbh, but then that’s her job, isn’t it?
Overall, the service is remarkably slick. The discussion can be a little stop-starty sometimes, but it was really a far smoother and more on-tap experience than I anticipated. I even got rapid responses to messages over the weekend, which was unanticipated.
Talkspace vs Betterhelp
The truth you can edit messages before sending them means you’re unlikely to blurt out something vulnerable and revealing in the heat of the minute. Extensive minutes of realisation might be hard to come by if you can’t get an unwinded flow going.
Who do I think it might it be good for?
Anybody with a low-end mental health concern who’s cool with getting counselled in a very internet-y, 2016-y way. If you’re living under the blackest, bleakest cloud possible and require serious attention (and potentially some medications), most likely isn’t for you Betterhelp Emoji