How does it work? Dr Abbott Betterhelp…
After filling in a survey to ascertain what particular flavour of mental you are, you’re coupled with a counsellor, who you can mercilessly swap for a different one at any time. (I got Dr. Laura Dabney, from Virginia). You then start an instantaneous messaged therapy session that both you and your counsellor can drop in and out of, and which could, in theory, go on and on till among you ultimately passed away.
What does it cost?
You get a free seven-day trial – just like a totally free Netflix or Amazon Prime trial, except with way more concerns about what your childhood was like. After that, it costs from �,� 24.50 a week for unlimited message-based counselling and one ‘complimentary’ phone session with your counsellor per month. Yeah, I do not get how it’s free either, but whatever.
How much is BetterHelp monthly?
Filtering that through instant messaging might be valuable if you find the idea of baring your soul to a complete stranger a bit awks. You will not get the same connection as with in person counselling, however the semi-anonymity may make it much easier to open if you have actually been consuming 2 bottles of rum and dancing around in your dead nan’s wedding dress every night.
She first ascertained the scale of my stress and anxiety, what triggers it– social scenarios, meeting individuals for the first time– and after that dived headlong into my fractious childhood (separated parents, stretched familial relationships, bullied in junior school). She was quite nosey tbh, but then that’s her job, isn’t it?
In general, the service is remarkably slick. The conversation can be a little stop-starty sometimes, but it was actually a far smoother and more on-tap experience than I anticipated. I even got quick actions to messages over the weekend, which was unexpected.
Talkspace vs Betterhelp
The fact you can modify messages prior to sending them means you’re unlikely to blurt out something unguarded and revealing in the heat of the moment. Profound 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 an extremely internet-y, 2016-y method. If you’re living under the blackest, bleakest cloud possible and require serious attention (and perhaps some medications), most likely isn’t for you Dr Abbott Betterhelp