BetterHelp is an online therapy and counseling service that attracted a lot of unwanted attention recently. The controversy started when many big Youtubers including Anna Akana, Domics, Boogie2988 and Philip DeFranco etc. received sponsorship from BetterHelp. When their fans signed up for the service, they soon found out BetterHelp wasn’t as professional as they claimed and many felt the service was a scam for money.

The king of Youtube, Pewdiepie, made a video on this subject in which he discussed BetterHelp in great detail. We recommend you to watch it afterwards. In short, the sponsored Youtubers, especially Philip DeFranco since he was the first one to promote it to other Youtubers, failed to look into the service and carelessly promoted it to their fans.

1. BetterHelp Terms and Services issues

Since the controversy, BetterHelp changed its Terms and Services. However, before they changed it, there were a lot of red flags about their service.

Firstly, according to BetterHelp’s Terms and Services they take no responsibility for the quality of the counselors and don’t even do a proper background check! Apparently, it was up to the customers to ensure the quality of their counselor. Does this sound familiar to you? Well, it should. After all this is why Uber is kicked out of many cities. However, since BetterHelp deals with mental health issues and you are paying quite a bit of money, you would expect them to perform a thorough background check of their counselors.

We make no representation or warranty whatsoever as to the willingness or ability of a Counselor to give advice.

We make no representation or warranty whatsoever as to whether you will find the Counselor Services relevant useful, correct, relevant. satisfactory or suitable to your
needs.

Don’t worry, it gets better. BetterHelp really don’t want to take any responsibility. They can’t even guarantee the ability of their counselors to “give advice”. Yes, I had to read that part again as well. What exactly do the so called counselors do then? BetterHelp can’t ensure that their service is relevant to their customers, which make more sense as it is an online service and couldn’t replace physical meetings with a therapist. But this doesn’t stop BetterHelp from promoting their service in this way! It is advertised to be an alternative to expensive face to face therapy!

The Counselors are neither our employees nor agents nor representatives. Furthermore, we assume no responsibility for any act, omission or doing of any Counselor.

Lastly, you 100% can expect BetterHelp to state that the counselors aren’t representatives or employees. Does this also sound familiar? Think Uber again.

2. Profit from Mental Health issues

This is the icing on the cake. Some creators, like Boogie2988, have publicly said they received $200 per referral. Yes, $200 per successful signup to the service. That is an insane amount of money! No wonder Youtube Creators are eager to dedicate an entire video to the promotion of BetterHelp. On the other hand, we are NOT claiming that all Youtubers did it for the money, but it is hard to believe they would pass on such enticing offer. The issue now is how ethical it is to profit from people suffering from mental health issues? This in a way tests our morals and bottom line.

3. Customer reviews

Here’s the bottom line. If BetterHelp works and people are satisfied with it then there wouldn’t be an issue. Of course there will always be cases where some customers have a bad experience, but finding a pattern in the negative reviews definitely raises some red flags. All of the negative reviews contain 1 of the following; Unprofessional counselors that didn’t help, consistent cancellation of appointments, or constant switching counselors without a reason. Some customers shared some horrible experiences with the service on Trustpilot and Youtube, whereas others had amazing experiences. It is difficult to determine how many of the reviews are genuine, either way there is a problem with BetterHelp.

It seems BetterHelp shares a lot of similarities with Uber and how they started to decline. At the end of the day it is just a platform connecting counselors with people suffering from mental health issues, but takes no responsibility because it will drive up the costs. BetterHelp is just another online platform that is out to earn some money and its problems could be applied to any other online platform. We wouldn’t necessarily call it a scam, but we will not call it a legitimate business either. Since it deals with mental health issues, there is the question whether or not it is ethical to profit from such serious matter. We believe this is one of the main reasons why people are upset.