Lately, quite a few YouTube content creators have been questioned on their ceaseless promotion of  Better Help, an intermediary between counsellors and prospective clients, apparently at a lower price than conventional therapy.

Some people swear by the services they received – from the counsellors, that is, who are not employees of the company. It’s basically a lucky dip – if one is put in contact with a decent counsellor, they’ll naturally love it. If not, they’ll be plainly scammed, paying for absolutely nothing (being strung along for weeks and not even managing to complete one appointment).

The company itself makes no guarantee of even the accuracy of these services or matching clients with the right therapist (which is… what they’re supposed to do). Or even verifying that therapists are licensed in the first place (it’s the client’s responsibility, apparently, to verify that).

It makes sense, right? Whenever you walk into the headquarters of any service provider, it’s your responsibility to check that those you interact with are qualified to work there – I mean, maybe they’re just squatting in an office in plain daylight.

If you did have a good experience and managed to get value out of it, the privacy issue comes up.

They’re recording your therapy sessions and passing them on to third parties abroad, while they themselves are not bound by the confidentiality the actual therapists are supposed to maintain.

People lauding this service never mention that, hence I simply assume they don’t know. It’s all in their TOS; every session is recorded and can be used for marketing purposes and “training” (training who?).

Civilised societies are so used to the confidentiality between a therapist and client it probably wouldn’t cross their minds a business in this field could think of using this very personal data. After all, they want to help you – right…? Wrong.

They are a business, with the normal scruples, or lack thereof.  Their parent company “helps” people find a number of services – among them, psychics.

Nine out of ten complains involve people being unaware they were to be billed for a whole month in advance; the fee advertised to them is the weekly one. What – are so many people simply stupid and didn’t notice? Or is there an issue with the company letting them know how they’ll be billed?

According to some, as long as they put enough disclaimers in their TOS, they are not a scam.

Forget legalese for a moment – if your TOS disavow what you are advertising, it’s a scam. Plain and simple. If you advertise a service and then offer no guarantees regarding its quality, relevance or even existence (they don’t guarantee counsellors will agree to help you, while you keep paying to be registered), then yes, it’s a scam.

Would it be OK, in terms of legality, for someone to sell you mushrooms with a small notice on the wrapper that they’re actually horseshit moulded and painted to look like mushrooms? It’s your fault you never read the entire label after all. Give me a break. It’s false advertising and abusing people’s trust.

And not just any people falling for a scam – people with mental health problems. Poorer people with mental health problems, who can’t afford face to face therapy.

This is who they’ve been stealing from.

The negative reviews / dire warnings include a panoply of stories, from money (one to three hundred dollars) being taken out of the account without the client’s permission, to appointments being missed repeatedly (three times in a row in one case). The conclusion is the same in each case – no help of any kind was ever provided. And unlike the perfectly styled, copycat positive ones, they read – surprise, surprise – as if they’d been written by actual former clients.

Also, people repeatedly complained of receiving Christian preaching from religious counsellors instead of actual help.

If you frequently listen to YouTube content (as most people do nowadays), you’ve probably heard this company being pitched by “big names”, as a life-saving, reliable service. This video series explains how this promotion has come about, step by step.

Those promoting the “service” swear by it by claiming they’ve personally used and loved it.

Moreover, the analysis linked to above proves a whole network of YouTube content creators started making videos about depression around the same time (late August to late September 2018), claiming to be personally affected by it, in order to promote this company (and make money as a result).

Many reviewers have complained about being rejected after filling out forms, based on the claim that their problems were far too serious for the so-called licensed counsellors to speak to them. Welcome to for-profit mental health franchises, where someone is no longer a human being in need, but a liability.

By only taking on “light” cases, they prove that they’re not capable of, or willing to actually see someone through genuine mental health issues. They are a friends-for-rent company, merely pretending to listen to those who don’t want to talk to anyone else. Guess what – there are charities and suicide helplines which do that free of charge.

Data collection and selling businesses have been flourishing for years.

A while ago, a bunch of YouTubers were involved in another scandal around a social media app called Candid, which sold users’ data to an AI building company.

Capitalism, right? Anything that can be monetised and put on a conveyor belt is fair game, even the mental health of financially underprivileged people.

Seriously, fuck this shit.