The Controversy surrounding Betterhelp
BetterHelp is an online therapy app that markets itself as “ making professional counseling accessible, affordable, and convenient’. You have the choice of how to contact your therapist via e-mail, text messages, video conferencing, software, or online chats. Betterhelp was founded in 2013 by Alon Mata and Danny Brangoiner. Alona Mata started Betterhelp due to his challenges finding professional counseling services that interfered with his schedule he wanted to help others that found it hard to fit therapy into their schedule. Danny Bragonier helped develop the web-based counseling portal and therapist directory. In 2018 Alon and Danny would sell the company to Teladoc.
In the early years of BetterHelp, everything seemed to be going great many YouTubers sponsored by BetterHelp spoke about their experience with using the online mental health service. YouTubers like Philip Defranco, Shane Dawson, Bobby Burns, and Heath Husser talked about their experience using BetterHelp and how the therapist on the site helped them with their mental health struggles. Online reviews would say the same with a verified licensed therapist that BetterHelp claims were employed to help you would expect the best but that was far from the case and had at least 3 years of experience and have it affordable.
But that was far from the truth the first controversy that came out was the therapists that BetterHelp had employed were licensed but weren’t actually in their Terms and Conditions which state “ The users should verify the license of their therapist”. Another sentence in their Terms of Service as they were an “online counseling platform worldwide, geared toward helping people dealing with issues, such as stress, anxiety, relationships, depression, addiction, trauma, eating and Lgbt matters but on their FAQ section it website clearly states BetterHelp’ app and counselors shouldn’t be used for people dealing with server mental illness such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder of people who consider self-harm. But when YouTubers who have been sponsored by BetterHelp talked about their experiences they spoke about how the therapists helped them with stress in their lives and feeling of bordering and depression.
The FTC would make a report on BetterHelp saying “ from 2018 to 202 used consumers email addresses and the fact that they had previously been in therapy to help Facebook identify similar consumers and targeted them with aid for BetterHelp services” with BetterHelp using their user’s data the company rounded up ten thousands of new paying users and millions of dollars in revenue. The FTC would also claim that BetterHelp allegedly “pushed” consumers to divulge sensitive information by repeatedly misrepresenting its privacy policies along with sign-ups for its counseling services.
Over 80 users filed complaints about BetterHelp claiming that they began to notice that the company would charge them with excessive fees. BetterHelp would allegedly take hundreds of dollars for one month’s payments before the seven-day free trial was up. With the scandal coming out many users would take to Reddit, Youtube, Twitter, and Tiktok to talk about their experiences with using BetterHelp many users would claim that their therapists would never show up for their scheduled appointments, and some would cancel at the last minute or their therapists assist them with the help they needed overall their experiences were horrible.
A Youtuber by the name of Deschroma uploaded a video talking about her terrible experience with BetterHelp saying “ I couldn’t in good conscience, after doing the trial recommend it you guys. There’s nothing I can say other there’s no way in hell I could recommend them to you”. Another user by the name of Caleb Hill who spoke with The Wall Street Journal would talk about using BetterHelp at the time he was 22 years old and living in Tennessee and searched for online therapy after his conservative parents kicked him out of the house while talking about what had happened with his therapist they would recommend him to choose between “ Either you sacrifice your family or you sacrifice being gay”. Caleb Hill would say to the reporter that “ I needed someone to tell me I was gay and that was OK. I got the exact opposite”.
The FTC charged that BetterHelp failed to provide consumers proper notice of how their information would be used and limit how third parties could use the data they gained from the platform BetterHelp was fined $7.8 million for their handling of their customer’s data. FTC demanded that BetterHelp immediately stopped sharing their customers’ data with third parties.
BetterHelp has not yet addressed these allegations publicly. Youtuber Phillip Defrance who was sponsored by BetterHelp and worked along with has cut ties with the company. That being said that raises the question all of this is public information yet many YouTubers who I watch continue to accept sponsorships from BetterHelp and talk about how the online therapy site helped them with their mental health struggles does that say something about them? Do they use BetterHelp or read off a script? I’ll leave that question for you
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