I Used to Research Mental Health Treatments — Here’s What I Think About Headspace Mental Health Coaching

In April 2024, after over a decade of delivering app-based mindfulness content, Headspace began offering mental health coaching services to adults in the United States. And Headspace’s timing couldn’t have been better for me.

I had already been considering ending therapy, but I had wanted to do it in my own time. I wasn’t quite ready to completely cut out professional mental health support, and Headspace’s commitment to research and evidence-based science intrigued me. But as someone who holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology, I’d heard horror stories about mass-delivered mental healthcare. How would Headspace’s text-based mental health coaching stack up? I met with a Headspace coach for one month to find out.

Once I decided to delve into mental health coaching, I went to the website to sign up (you can also do this in the app). After clicking the blue sign-up button, I was immediately quoted a price for the coaching plan (there’s only one), invited to log in, and funneled into a series of quick click-through pages.

One set of pages made sure Headspace mental health coaching was right for me. To suss this out, I had to share whether I was U.S.-based (you have to be), my birth date (adults only), whether I had one of the health plans that covered coaching (I didn’t), and if I’d had any of a list of mental or behavioral red flags (I hadn’t).

I don’t love sharing personal information online, but nothing about this sequence made me feel uneasy. I also appreciated how discreet the mental health screen was. It was a simple yes-and-no questionnaire that didn’t require me to disclose specifics, and it took less than five minutes to complete.

From there, I clicked through several pages to personalize my plan, which also took less than five minutes. I selected the reasons I wanted to work with a coach (you have options like sleeping better, reducing stress, and managing anxiety) and the parts of my life impacted (career, family, physical health, etc.).

At this point, I could see the price (which matched what I saw before I began the sign-up sequence). In a world of hidden fees and dynamic pricing, having a solid, single option at an expected fee felt pleasantly straightforward.

Choosing a Coach

Once I paid, I had to log in to the app to select my coach. Swapping devices felt clunky but made sense since coaching sessions occur exclusively on the app. If you prefer to use a browser, Headspace probably isn’t for you.

Headspace offered me a curated list of six providers. I could see a photo, their name, pronouns, availability, credentials, and a brief statement for each. When I clicked on their profile, I could read more about them and their background. The amount of information felt perfect. I could get a gut sense of each without excess information.

As advertised, all coaches were certified health coaches or had a related master’s degree. I saw coaches with master’s in sports and performance psychology, clinical mental health counseling, applied developmental psychology, marriage and family therapy, and more. Health coaching certifications and the master’s degrees I saw generally require hours of hands-on clinical practice, so it seems appropriate to use them as qualifications for providing one-on-one coaching support.

Coaching availability was impressive — some worked until 1 a.m. (Central Time) on certain days, and many listed weekend times. Scheduling was quick, too. A green circle highlighted that one coach could do my first session within two hours.

To lock in my coach, I had to select a time for the first session, which caught me off guard. After scrambling to consult my calendar, I committed to a coach, and a confirmation email popped into my inbox.

Of the six coaches Headspace had me choose from, five appeared to share most aspects of my identity; one was a Black man who presented as cisgender. At this point in the sign-up process, I hadn’t shared any demographic information yet, so it’s unlikely my options were purposely curated to match these aspects of my identity. (Later on, I had the option to share my pronouns and racial background.)

Headspace has an eye toward supporting people with a range of identities. The coaching selection page touted unconscious bias training and commitment to allyship. In their profiles, coaches also disclosed their pronouns, race, and whether or not they were parents or child-free. Still, If you’re part of a minority group, you may or may not feel that Headspace coaches have the necessary cultural competence.

Every time I worked with my Headspace mental health coach, I ended up feeling more upbeat than when I had logged on, but the buggy app occasionally threw a wet blanket on the good vibes.

My First Session

When you start talk therapy, you should expect to dedicate some time to completing forms and dealing with logistics. It’s annoying, but just how it goes. Headspace mental health coaching is no exception, but the time burden was briefer than the intake processes I’m used to. Most importantly, my coach dove into providing practical help right away.

Before my first session, I had some tasks teed up in the app, including an anxiety and depression check-in, a form for my coach where I shared basics, including my name, pronouns, and emergency contact information, and a video about coaching. When I saw this list, I flashed back to some epic medical forms I’ve had to complete and set aside time the day before my first session to tackle the tasks. To my surprise, all together, these tasks took under six minutes to complete. Whew.

The 30-minute intake session was similarly refreshing. Right away, my coach asked me about my biggest pain points, elements of my background, and scheduling preferences. The whole thing took nine minutes, leaving us about 20 minutes to dig into what I had actually wanted to discuss.

I’m used to first therapy sessions being frustratingly administrative. When I trained as a therapist, we were taught to set expectations with clients who crave more productive initial encounters. I’ve always hated this approach to first sessions and loved that Headspace mental health coaching keeps admin to a reasonable minimum.

By the end of my first session, my coach and I had talked about an issue that was bothering me and created a game plan. My coach gave me a quick, custom visualization exercise to try, and answered my questions about why she thought this approach would work for me. She also sent me a link with a guided exercise. Notably, the link was to a YouTube account — and it wasn’t Headspace’s. That my coach was willing to provide me with resources outside of the Headspace universe made me feel like she was really responding to me in particular and not just advancing the Headspace brand.

My Next 2 Sessions

Before each of my next two sessions (three sessions being my subscription’s monthly allotment), I saw new paperwork pop up in the app to check on my mood or rate a prior session. None of it took longer than three minutes to complete.

The 30-minute sessions do go by quickly, but my coach directed our time skillfully. She asked follow-up questions about what we’d already discussed, she validated what I shared, and when we approached a half hour, she wound us down, letting me know we needed to pause soon and asking me what my biggest takeaways were.

I left every session with something clear I could look into — a time-management exercise, a podcast episode — to help me more effectively deal with whatever had been on my mind. I felt empowered.

These days, whenever I get support via text, whether it’s therapy for mental health or customer service for an online order, I wonder whether I’m speaking to a real human. I’m always on the lookout for AI’s telltale signs. So before I started my subscription, part of me wondered whether Headspace’s coaches were bots. My worries were unfounded. I was relieved to discover my coach had that warm human touch that (so far) AI can’t replicate. The more we worked together, the more my coach and I gelled.

Still, despite this barrier, my coach used language (including reflections and questions) to demonstrate that she heard me and to build trust. I felt connected to her by the end of our month together.

Technical Issues

My biggest gripe about Headspace? The app is buggy.

One glitch that I found really bothersome was a strange lag in my coach’s responses during sessions. I would send a message through the app, and not hear anything back for a few minutes. Then I’d see ellipses show up (indicating my coach was typing), but the time stamp would be two minutes old. At first, I worried that my coach was ignoring me or using AI to compose her responses, but I eventually realized that it was a glitch with the app. When I brought up this glitch to my husband, a computer programmer, he agreed it sounded like a technical problem, calling it an app latency issue.

Other app functions were off, too. For instance, when I clicked to start my therapy sessions, I invariably was greeted with a white screen. When this would happen, there was nothing to do but close and reopen the app. And yes, I tried all the things: powering down, updating, and reinstalling. But no, I couldn’t fix any of these issues during my subscription.

Finally, at the time of testing, I was dealing with arm problems that caused me pain when typing on my phone, so I had hoped to take advantage of the speech-to-text accessibility feature. While I didn’t experience any bugs during use, the functionality was lacking. To use it, you’re taken to a new screen where you can’t see the chat, which caused me to lose my train of thought and fail to track new texts from my coach to the point where the accommodation wasn’t workable. If you can’t type comfortably on your phone, Headspace coaching won’t be a good fit.

Scheduling at Headspace is simple. When you go to the care section of the app, you’ll see your next coaching session details front and center. If you need to reschedule, it’s a quick click to select a different time. However, you’ll need to think ahead because sessions need to be rescheduled at least 24 hours in advance. If you cancel within 24 hours or miss your appointment, you’ll give up a session credit. Don’t be late either — arriving 15 minutes beyond the start time means you’ve missed the session. I never got a reminder email, so make sure to mark your calendars so you don’t forget your session.

If you’re ready to stop your Headspace coaching subscription, you can cancel in the app or online at any point before your next payment goes through. I canceled mine a few days before my next monthly payment was due and could still access everything in my account up until the day my membership lapsed. One thing that really stood out to me was that even when my membership was over, I could still access my chat transcripts with my coach.

Before it offered mental health coaching, Headspace established itself as a dominant mindfulness app with meditations, videos, playlists, podcasts, courses, and more. Access to nearly all of this content requires subscribing or signing up for a free trial. While my testing focused on Headspace coaching, I also explored its other offerings.

Free Mindfulness Resources

If you want to get a sense of what Headspace is like before signing up, you can explore a limited assortment of free content online and in the app. The unlocked app features are especially sparse. I could only find one to test: Feeling Overwhelmed SOS. When I clicked on it, a calming male voice invited me to imagine a stream of warm sunlight flowing through my body, dissolving any sense of discomfort or overwhelm — and it worked. I hadn’t realized how stressed I had been until I felt my body unclench during the exercise.

You’ll find slightly more free options on the website, including articles with interactive videos embedded. As an experienced meditator, I appreciated the quality content, but the open tabs on my laptop’s internet browser tempted me, and I struggled to focus.

Headspace App Subscription

To get access to more content, you’ll need to subscribe to Headspace or start a 7- or 14-day free trial. Like most apps I’m familiar with, this free trial requires creating an account and consenting to pay when the trial ends. Once I signed up for the trial, I saw a daily content menu organized by time of day. I sampled some of each and I found that the content did what it said it would. Focus music kept me on-task while I worked. White noise blotted out any nighttime house sounds. Guided meditations calmed my body. The app sent me encouraging messages and celebrated my streaks. I enjoyed the content, but I did experience glitches in the app’s interface here as well as during coaching sessions.

Headspace for Organizations

As of this writing, what Headspace offers to organizations (via health plans and employers) isn’t the same as what it offers to the general public. If you subscribe to Headspace through an organization, not only can you get the full Headspace library and unlimited mental health coaching, but you can also access in-the-moment coaching, mental health therapy, and psychiatry. When I independently tried a Headspace mental health coaching subscription, I couldn’t access and test these elevated services.

Headspace is in a league of its own. Some competitors, like Calm and Happier, offer comparable mindfulness resources; other rivals, like BetterHelp and Talkspace, provide direct-to-consumer mental healthcare. But as of this writing, I couldn’t find any that combined both in a single option that anyone can access. Also, competitors that offer mental healthcare typically only offer therapy, not coaching like Headspace.

It’s important to note that coaching isn’t enough if you’re in active crisis. If you want to take a deep dive to process your past traumas or deal with active addiction and self-harm, Headspace won’t be the right fit for you, even if you like the idea of an all-in-one platform.

Still, just because Headspace mental health coaching is more appropriate for less intense support, doesn’t meant it’s a lower quality service. I went into this review concerned that “mental health coaching” might be code for “not good enough to count as therapy.” My experience with Headspace flipped that assumption on its head.

When I compare Headspace’s coaching to my experience with Talkspace’s text-based online therapy services, I found my Headspace coach more responsive and thoughtful. It’s clear Headspace hires quality coaches and gives them the structure they need to provide quality service, whereas the therapist I once worked with at Talkspace told me how frazzled she was to have nearly 200 clients, which made it feel impossible to have her full attention.

I liked my Headspace coach enough that I wished I could do video chats, longer sessions, or buy additional sessions. While you can find these options at competitor BetterUp, which offers life coaching, you’ll also find a vastly different pricing model. A single additional BetterUp coaching session costs about the same as a month’s worth of Headspace mental health coaching and content.

When it comes to price point and breadth of offerings, right now no one else has the mix that Headspace does.

App interface gripes aside, I loved my Headspace mental health coaching experience and would recommend it in a heartbeat. If a friend told me they needed just a little professional support to tune up their mental health or keep it on track, I’d tell them to try Headspace mental health coaching. For roughly the same price per session as one insurance co-pay, you get useful, actionable advice on how to tweak your mental health and short, text-based sessions are easy to fit into a full life.

However, if a friend seemed to be struggling in a big way, I’d steer them away from Headspace mental health coaching. As talented as coaches can be, helping people in this sort of situation isn’t what they do. A licensed therapist is the right type of expert to help you manage more complex mental health problems.

Given the red tape around accessing traditional mental health care, Headspace mental health coaching fills an important gap. Consider me a convert.

We at Everyday Health believe some of the best health product insights come from unbiased, on-the-ground testing. That’s why Everyday Health hired a fleet of writers and experts, including licensed therapists, to do just that with the best online therapy and coaching service providers today.

For example, I come to this testing as an experienced mental health writer who has reviewed other online mental healthcare providers. Prior to pivoting to writing, I researched treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. I’ve also earned a master’s degree in counseling psychology, which included a practicum where I provided therapy for common mental health concerns like anxiety, depression, and trauma. Because of my background, I know what effective mental health support looks like, red flags to watch out for, and how to methodically investigate mental health treatments.

As of the date of publishing this review, we’ve tested, and reviewed over 40 online therapy companies and mental health apps, like Headspace. For each one, we evaluate whether the service is affordable for most Americans (such as its affordability, accessibility, and overall quality of care. So with Headspace, to really kick the tires of its mental health coaching, I embarked on a two-and-a-half-month investigation where I personally test-drove their suite of services including their free resources (online and in-app), the content included with a free trial membership, as well as all of the features available to subscribers of Headspace’s mental health coaching.