How does it work? Patty Garced Betterhelp…
After completing a questionnaire to ascertain what particular flavour of mental you are, you’re coupled with a counsellor, who you can mercilessly swap for a various one at any time. (I got Dr. Laura Dabney, from Virginia). You then kick off an instant messaged therapy session that both you and your counsellor can drop in and out of, and which could, in theory, continue up until one of you eventually died.
What does it cost?
You get a complimentary 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 unlimited message-based counselling and one ‘free’ phone session with your counsellor monthly. Yeah, I don’t get how it’s totally 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 practical. You won’t get the exact same connection just like face-to-face counselling, however the semi-anonymity might make it easier to open if you’ve been consuming 2 bottles of rum and dancing around in your dead nan’s wedding dress every night.
She initially determined the scale of my anxiety, what triggers it– social situations, meeting people for the first time– and then dived headlong into my fractious youth (separated moms and dads, stretched familial relationships, bullied in junior school). She was pretty nosey tbh, but then that’s her task, isn’t it?
Overall, the service is impressively slick. The conversation can be a little stop-starty at times, however it was actually a far smoother and more on-tap experience than I expected. I even got fast reactions to messages over the weekend, which was unexpected.
Talkspace vs Betterhelp
The reality you can modify messages prior to sending them suggests you’re not likely to blurt out something vulnerable and revealing in the heat of the minute. So profound minutes of realisation might be tough to come by if you can’t get an unwinded flow going.
Who do I think it might it be good for?
Anyone with a low-end psychological 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 imaginable and need major attention (and potentially some medications), most likely isn’t for you Patty Garced Betterhelp