I will start by saying that I have been with my therapist and talkspace for years now but there are a number of issues: the biggest one being, insurance being out of network but there’s no notification of that. I just recently discovered that my insurance is OON and I had no idea until Talkspace requested payments and i checked my insurance portal. This is a HUGE deal when it comes to treatment. I, myself work in healthcare as a utilization reviewer that works to get prior authorizations so I know the urgency of ensuring not only are patients covered but that it’s communicated when they are not. When you’re doing messaging sessions weekly which are being billed for and you don’t know that they’re not covered then that only increases the need for therapy…. An alert notification in app would help to notify patients when their benefit information has changed or a phone call.Next, the glitches are pretty annoying. Having to restart the app essentially when it freezes and now with upgrading to a new phone it does not want to open with my FaceId then it just keeps trying to open itself and I have to swipe out of it, move my face away, and enter my passcode instead. I’ll have to see if I can turn off the FaceID to just use my passcode.I love my therapist and don’t intend to leave her but this insurance issue is a big issue for me.

I can’t blame the app for quality of therapists- I think it does a lot to make therapy available to people. And I’ve had good experiences personally. But it isn’t a very user friendly format throughout. Signing up isn’t always super intuitive- if you put in insurance and it looks like they find it (you get clear message if they don’t at all) you go through a questionnaire and then they ask you to subscribe if they think your insurance doesn’t cover the sessions. So if something processed wrong, and say you know you have coverage for $20 copay, you aren’t clear from that screen before you subscribe whether it’s going through that way or not- maybe you think you’ll get reimbursed or something else-but they didn’t find that coverage. My insurance is weird and I had to try it under a couple different companies to get the coverage to show, but it finally showed the copay. But then randomly after an app update, they decided my coverage expired (my insurance hadn’t changed) and emailed me early the morning of a session, and 8 minutes later emailed to cancel the session to avoid fees. There is still no actual customer support you can talk to immediately- though the chatbot gives the false impression you might be connected to someone. You have to submit a message and wait up to 3 days if an article doesn’t help. This doesn’t seem like a great set up for people dealing with depression and anxiety and other issues- to have things like the app suddenly cancel their appointment for an issue that could be sorted with a couple minutes of human contact but you don’t have anyone available to sort it.

I was initially matched with a therapist that specialized in a subject that I had no issues with nor did I specify I had issues with. I had to accept in order to try to change therapists, only one of which was female (which is what I wanted) so I had to accept that.. but I felt like I wished I had more choices to pick from. My therapist was nice. Very generic though, and didn’t know how to use the platform. Promised to email me something and never did. Red flags raised when she cancelled our second appointment together but we rescheduled in the same week. I really wanted routine and continuity… and I didn’t want to switch providers at this point after already going through a really tough first appointment. So I stuck with the same provider. Fast forward, she cancelled our 4th appointment, rescheduled it for two days later, then I waited on video and she never showed up and didn’t message til the next day with a pretty tepid sorry. I called (to no avail) and emailed Talkspace to share this and show my disappointment and yes I got a refund, but no apology for being treated as unimportant or uncared for. Talkspace was my therapist’s side gig so clearly not as important as her full time job which is fine if that’s ok with you. But it took its toll on me. Will not continue. To add insult to injury, the app is not very user friendly.

If you’re wanting a fair exchange, to pay for and receive a service, this app isn’t for you. You’re told you’re supposed to be able to talk to your therapist at least once a week. I signed up and the intake person was fine. I got ‘matched’ and was supposed to hear from my new therapist. The app worked great so I had hopes… but I could not get a response from my assigned therapist for days at a time, and could not get an appointment scheduled. The first therapist was MIA, so I switched providers and tried again. Same experience. I never even got to introduce myself to the counselor. Literally I never got to speak to a therapist at any point for over a week. I contacted customer service and they were entirely unhelpful, I had already paid for a whole month (as they require), yet they count it as paid weekly, and I paid for a week of absolutely nothing. I asked multiple times for a refund. Finally got it. HUGE waste of time. Their site said wait times are longer than the 24hrs they shoot for… but a week? I asked both customer service and the therapists (tried to via text) if I had done something wrong, or if the system was just overwhelmed, and other things as I didn’t want to quit, I wanted to give them and chance and I wanted the service. Nothing was addressed. So in order to not be charged for absolutely nothing, with no response toIf/when things would be different at some point, I had to cancel. Until a lot of change happens within this company, I DO NOT RECOMMEND.