Posted by By Trey Nitza, Visual Arts Editor-in-Chief
Putting “BetterHelp controversies” into Google is appalling.
Watching YouTube every now and then, I have heard of this online therapy service through their sponsorships with a lot of videos on the YouTube site. I and most people rarely pay attention to really any sponsorships on the site to be honest, but I can still recall the basics of their spiel. “BetterHelp is a cheaper, more accessible alternative to regular therapy, where users can meet with a licensed therapist once a week, and send them a text message at any time.” Something like that. It’s the core of their marketing. But then I scroll down.
“It’s 2023 and YouTubers are still accepting BetterHelp sponsorships?”
This is the first YouTube comment I saw, (off of a weekly news video on the platform that a friend recommended), which questioned the ethics of accepting a sponsorship from BetterHelp. Then I started to notice the trend. A lot of comments on BetterHelp sponsored YouTube videos criticized the fact that the creators struck a deal with this website that hasn’t really even made it on huge news headlines. So, at a certain point, I felt like I had to know what all the complaints were actually addressing. And, like I said, the results that I found were concerning.
One of the most apparent problems with BetterHelp is their issues around privacy. BetterHelp openly states in their Privacy Policy that they will hand over certain client information, including messages with therapists, to third party advertisers. Oddly enough, however, this isn’t this much of a surprise in the advanced digital age that we live in today. But it didn’t take much more reading to find a more troubling detail: BetterHelp will keep your personal data for ten years after your last login, in order to “allow a seamless reactivation in the event you begin using our services again,” according to their policy. But let’s say that you wanted to request a data erasure. Well, you’re in luck, because their privacy policy states that it is in your rights to do so. Unfortunately, there’s a big ‘but’. According to the website, a successful data erasure wouldn’t apply to your Clinical Health Records, or disclosures of personal identifiable information to third parties. So that data would still be out there for another decade. I’m not sure there’s that much more information that would be important to erase. It also should be common knowledge that if a therapist personally broke their confidentiality agreement, they could easily lose their license or be sued by the client.
I wish that was all. Yet The Federal Trade Commission began a legal offensive on BetterHelp earlier this year, citing that the website repeatedly harasses users into submitting an invasive questionnaire, and shares that information with huge platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and Pinterest, for targeted advertising purposes. This ended with the company being forced to pay a 7.8 million dollar settlement for “deceiving customers,” in addition to being banned from selling client info, even when BetterHelp continues to plead their innocence. But does this mean they’re completely done with their shady practices? I’m doubtful.
And then there’s the customer complaints. In a social worker’s review of her experience on BetterHelp, she cites the ease and convenience as one of the pros of the platform. She then goes into how nice her initial online Zoom call with her assigned therapist was. But shortly after that, she realized what some of the downsides were. For one, while clients are able to send a text message to their therapist at any time, and while those therapists are technically supposed to reply within 24 hours, this is often not the case. I found a heap of complaints about this from both the article mentioned above, posts on Reddit, and other customer reviews online, which say that therapists can sometimes take a week to reply, and non-face-to-face-communication can tend to feel highly impersonal and unproductive anyway. Therapists with possibly dozens of clients not replying promptly to messages isn’t an egregious offense by any means, but it’s the promise of BetterHelp, that therapists will respond within a day, which is the problem. There seems to be other fundamental issues with the site, including the fact that therapists can’t prescribe medication, diagnose mental illnesses, and that insurance can’t cover the pricey rates, ranging around $80 per week.
There are also plenty of fully positive reviews from BetterHelp users, don’t get me wrong. In an article by Innerbody, the alias of “Mikka” talks about how their expectations were exceeded, and how they enjoyed how convenient it was to switch counselors at any time. But… is it worth it? After looking through all this information, my stance at the end of the day is this:
BetterHelp provides therapy. Of course people are going to have positive experiences from it. Therapy can be one of the most beneficial things out there for your mental health, and an online alternative is probably the only possible option for a lot of people that could benefit from it. But it seems that people aren’t praising BetterHelp. They’re praising the fact that they received therapy while using BetterHelp. Nothing about BetterHelp’s service is above average or outstanding. Yet because people are receiving therapy, and because therapy is that beneficial, BetterHelp has gained a net-positive reputation, and has been able to get away with their rudimentary and egregious issues. I doubt many websites that carried these many problems while providing a service that is anything but therapy would last very long.
It seems that BetterHelp is currently the biggest online therapy brand out there because of the infamous sponsorships and effective marketing campaigns, but keep in mind that there are a plethora of different options out there; ones that seemed to have steered clear of utilizing these shady habits. So by all means, try out therapy, either in person, or online. But something as important as your source of therapy shouldn’t have as many cons as BetterHelp does.
The Maroon 