I’m a Therapist Who Was Skeptical of Cerebral — Until I Tried It

As a mom and a licensed therapist who has struggled with my own mental health over the years, I know firsthand how tricky it can be to balance therapy with the demands of parenthood. I’m always looking for ways to make therapy more accessible — not just for my clients but for myself, too. That’s why I was curious to review an online therapy service to see if it would make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life.

Cerebral has since accepted responsibility publicly, worked to ensure that it deletes all user data, and protects existing data with a HIPAA-compliant information security program. This notice about the Federal Trade Commission is located in the header of Cerebral’s homepage. So to get a clear picture of Cerebral’s services today, we decided to put it to the test to provide an honest overview. Plus, since the initial investigation, Cerebral has now launched couples therapy services, which we reviewed here as well.

For this review, I tested Cerebral’s individual therapy service for one month, and my colleague, Julia Pelly, a journalist and busy mom, tried its couples therapy services for one month (couples therapy wasn’t available in my state). This gave us the chance to more widely experience what Cerebral has to offer, especially from a client’s perspective.

Cerebral’s sign-up process took around 15 minutes for me. It started by requiring my first name, ZIP code, email, and phone number. I was informed while entering this info that my phone number would be used to send reminders or updates, which was straightforward.

Next I was asked to consent to the “Cerebral HIPAA Marketing Authorization,” which, in its first paragraph, had me authorize Cerebral to contact me via SMS or email for advertising and marketing purposes, to share my email, and to allow them to share certain persistent identifiers (such as IP addresses or device IDs), city and ZIP code associated with my account, how I interact on the website, and my long-term value to Cerebral with third-party websites, such as Google, and social media platforms, such as Meta and TikTok, “to improve Cerebral’s platform and services.”

Next I was asked to choose what kind of service I wanted to sign up for. I selected individual therapy. At this point I was given a breakdown of the pricing for the subscription and asked to provide my payment information.

There was a significant amount of promotional content sprinkled throughout this sign-up process, which felt like it was aimed at upselling me to commit to its quarterly subscription instead of its monthly subscription.

After I gave my payment information I was asked for more personal information, including my full legal name, birth date, address, and emergency contact. I was also asked how I’d heard about the service.

Therapist Matching

Once I was signed up for my subscription, I was matched with a therapist.

This “match” was made without me completing any intake questions about what symptoms I was experiencing or being asked if I had any preferences regarding what kind of therapist I wanted to work with.

This would likely be a problem for any client searching for a specialist (for example, a therapist who specializes in treating patients with specific diagnoses) or who wants a provider who shares their identity (like a queer therapist or therapist of color). I wasn’t looking for specialized care, so this was less of a dealbreaker for me, but I could see this being a real drawback for some people, especially when other online therapy services, including Talkiatry, BetterHelp, and Talkspace, do have you fill out a questionnaire before matching you.

My therapist match was a young female therapist, and I was able to review her bio and experience before scheduling my first appointment. In her profile I could see her availability for appointments, with the earliest option being within one day.

However, it is worth noting that I wasn’t able to review my therapist’s licensing information in her bio. A therapist’s license ensures they meet professional standards and have the training to provide ethical, competent care. Without clear licensing information being provided, it’s hard to know if a therapist is properly credentialed.

Client Dashboard and Mental Health Intake

After scheduling my first session I was given access to my client dashboard, which included information on my billing cycle, a bio about my therapist, and a way to message my therapist between sessions.

I was also prompted to complete a questionnaire about my mental health. This questionnaire included a few screening assessments for anxiety and depression. Then I was asked what my reason for seeking therapy was, which I told them was burnout.

I was also asked about the last time I saw my primary care physician and whether I was taking any medications, supplements, herbs, or vitamins. I found the medication question a bit odd because I wasn’t signing up for a plan that included psychiatry.

At the end of the intake I was asked to provide my weight and height. I understand how this information can be useful for some, especially when considering medication services, but the fact that it was a required question made me uncomfortable as a user seeking only individual therapy, and it may even be triggering for users seeking care related to body image or weight-related distress.

While I did not test couples therapy myself, my colleague Julia Pelly did. It is worth noting that if you sign up for couples therapy, you’ll be asked the same screening questions as you would with individual therapy as well as some questions specific to domestic violence and whether substance use was an issue for either partner.

As a therapist, I should reiterate that it concerns me that Cerebral does not ask you these questions before sign-up and payment, as it is not an adequate crisis resource for suicidal ideation, domestic violence, or substance use.

Cerebral definitely makes it difficult to forget about your upcoming session. I received three reminders ahead of my first session via email: the day before, the morning of, and 15 minutes before.

Therapy sessions were held on a video platform separate from Cerebral’s website called Doxy.me. This isn’t abnormal for online therapy platforms to use Doxy.me because it is HIPAA-secure.

While I didn’t experience technical difficulties during my video calls, I did notice background noise throughout our 45 minutes together. I couldn’t make out what the noise was, but it felt distracting. I don’t think the noise was related to issues with Doxy.me though; I suspect it was something in my therapist’s environment.

My First Session

My first therapy session began with my therapist introducing herself. She also made sure to explain the limits of confidentiality in telehealth, such as not being able to assure me that what I said in session couldn’t be heard by others around me if I was not in a private location.

Next, she let me know that she is not yet a fully licensed therapist but instead is under supervision. I appreciated her being open about this, but I did wish this information had been explained or shared before our session. Still, it isn’t unusual for online therapy services to work with therapists under supervision as part of their licensing, and she asked me to sign a consent form that I was okay with this. Again, this wasn’t a major issue for me, but there seemed to be a lot of information shared after I made my first payment that could have been shared beforehand.

After all that was squared away, we went over the results of my assessments, and she asked me some follow-up questions to get a fuller picture of my mental health history. While these questions did feel repetitive at times, especially after filling out the questionnaire, this process of going over an intake is not all that unusual for a first therapy session. It’s often beneficial for therapists to hear clients explain these answers in their own words versus through a standard intake form.

I have to admit that I could tell that my therapist was still in training. There were times when she seemed unsure of what to ask next, and there was a lot of stumbling over her words — all signs of a learning curve. I empathize with this — we all have to start somewhere in our career — but the experience did leave me feeling like this wasn’t an effective therapy session.

My Second Session

Since Cerebral offers its patients the ability to meet via video call or audio call, I decided to have my second session be a phone session.

There were no technical issues during the call, and this time I didn’t notice any background noise. However, because I couldn’t see my provider as we talked, I found myself getting distracted during our conversation by my own surroundings. I had a much harder time staying present in this conversation.

Like with our first session, I didn’t come away feeling like I had a very helpful or effective therapy session. My therapist still appeared to struggle at times to come up with questions to ask me, and a couple of times she repeated the same questions she’d asked before, making me feel as if she had already forgotten my answers.

As I noted above, I was not able to test couples therapy myself at Cerebral because this service was not available in my home state, but my colleague Julia Pelly was able to give it a try. And she did have a much more positive experience overall than I did in individual therapy.

With couples therapy, each partner gets their own client dashboard after sign-up, allowing them to complete private intake questionnaires prior to their first session. The individual dashboards also allow both partners to message the therapist separately — a notable change from other companies we tried, such as ReGain, where all asynchronous messages were sent in a shared messaging board so both could read what the other said.

Julia liked that there was a separate dashboard from her partner, and she said it helped create a safe space for both of them with their therapist. “My husband and I each had individual sessions with our therapist to talk one-on-one about what we wanted and needed from therapy and the ways in which we hoped to see our relationship grow.”

Cerebral also offers partners the ability to log in on separate devices or from separate locations — which makes it a flexible option for couples in a long-distance relationship or with different work schedules.

Couples Therapy Video Sessions

Julia had a much more positive experience for her first couples session than I did in my individual therapy session.

“My husband and I were both impressed with the way our therapist was able to make the space feel comfortable, even via video chat,” she said. “Our therapist took some time to introduce herself and get to know my husband and me, both individually and as a couple. She then laid out the process and ground rules of couples therapy in a way that was easy to understand.”

“The therapist greeted us both and talked us through what the session would entail — basically that we would get to know each other,” Julia continues. “She would ask us some questions about our relationship, and then we would talk through our plan for going forward with couples therapy.”

Their therapist also screened them again during this joint session for relationship abuse and suicidal ideation. I find this a bit concerning. If abuse was present in the relationship, having both partners present while answering would not be considered a safe approach because it may impact how one or both of them answers the question).

Julia and her partner found their therapist to be approachable.

This, Julia says, “led to some fun discussions later in the day and through the week about things [her and her husband] wanted to improve on.”

Overall, Julia was very pleased with how her couples therapy went at Cerebral and said she’d recommend it to anyone looking for this type of treatment. As parents with four young children, the couple especially appreciated the ability to schedule their virtual session during the kids’ nap time and prioritize their relationship without sacrificing money for a babysitter.

“We actually have talked about continuing using Cerebral,” Julia said. “We really liked our therapist and enjoyed both the time we were in sessions with her and the way it made us reflect on our relationship between sessions.”

While neither Julia nor I tested these services, Cerebral does include psychiatric medication management as one of its services.

If you sign up for Cerebral’s medication subscription (or a plan that includes it), you will have an initial 30-minute evaluation with a prescriber, then regular 15-minute follow-up sessions if you’re prescribed a medication. These sessions are much shorter than traditional psychiatric appointments, and they are shorter than several other online psychiatry providers we tested and evaluated, such as Talkiatry.

Any medication you are prescribed by Cerebral is billed separately from your monthly online subscription. If you want to use insurance, your prescription will be filled by your local pharmacy, and you’ll need to pick it up.

If you do not use insurance, your medication will be shipped through the mail via Cerebral’s own pharmacy, CerebralRx. The company says that medications through CerebralRx can cost up to 80 percent less than what you would pay out of pocket at national retail pharmacies, including GoodRx.

Cerebral’s medication management service is best suited for people seeking treatment for conditions like anxiety and depression, which can be treated with SSRIs.

Cerebral does still treat patients with ADHD, but because it cannot prescribe stimulant medication, it might not be the best option for your needs. The company can, however, still prescribe other nonstimulant medications for ADHD, such as Strattera or Wellbutrin.

At the end of each session I scheduled the next session directly with my therapist. If I needed to pause to look through my schedule or coordinate childcare, I was able to log in to my client dashboard and clearly see my therapist’s availability. My therapist seemed to have a lot of availability for set evening times.

I was also able to cancel my monthly subscription directly on my client dashboard. Cerebral only asked me once if I was sure of my decision, which I appreciated because it felt noninvasive. (Some of the other companies we tested had much more complicated cancellation processes.) However, the company also offered me a 30-percent discount on a three-month package if I continued services.

After accepting my cancellation, I received an email confirmation from Cerebral. However, it’s worth noting that just cancelling the service doesn’t mean you will be removed from Cerebral’s active marketing list. I continued receiving an email and a text at least every other day offering discounted pricing and encouraging me to prioritize my mental health specifically with Cerebral’s services.

This made me feel extremely uncomfortable and almost guilty for canceling, especially when I thought of users who might end necessary services due to budget limitations or changes in their home life.

Cerebral might be a solid option for people seeking individual therapy if your primary goal is convenience and flexibility. This is especially true if you do not want to use your insurance benefits or if you’re underinsured and would like to enroll in a relatively affordable monthly subscription service.

However, if you are looking for an individual therapy service that accepts insurance, we think you might have better options that don’t charge you an additional fee on top of your copay for doing so. For example, Brightside, Talkspace, and Amwell all allow you to use your insurance without requiring an additional fee.

All three of these companies also offer medication management for anxiety and depression, though like Cerebral, they do not prescribe controlled substances either. If you suspect you have a condition that might require a stimulant medication (such as ADHD), Talkiatry might be a better fit: It offers psychiatry with the ability to prescribe controlled substances and accepts insurance, making it a great choice for people who need more specialized medication support. Talkiatry’s ability to tailor the frequency of sessions to individual treatment plans stands out as a positive, too.

However, Talkiatry is a virtual psychiatry service; it does not offer talk therapy like Cerebral, Brightside, Talkspace, or Amwell do.

It is worth noting that Cerebral, Talkspace, Amwell, and Brightside’s individual therapy services seem to favor therapy modalities like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This might be a good option for some people, but if you’re interested in other therapy modalities or you’re dealing with trauma, you might want to consider Innerwell instead, which offers traditional talk therapy and psychiatry as well as EMDR and ketamine therapy. EMDR can be particularly effective for the treatment of trauma. However, Innerwell comes with considerably more out-of-pocket expense than Cerebral or other subscription therapy services, such as BetterHelp.

Talkspace and Brightside have faced litigation, too, but for other reasons. Talkspace faced a class action lawsuit filed in 2023 for questionable billing practices and a lack of therapist availability. Brightside came under scrutiny after it was revealed one of its therapists was using their spouse to impersonate them in sessions, leading to questions about Brightside’s ability to vet the qualifications and ethics of its providers.

My experience with Cerebral was positive in terms of accessibility and convenience. The flexibility of video and phone sessions made it easy to fit therapy into a busy schedule, which I think would be a huge plus for people who are frequently on the go or have tight schedules.

Cerebral could be a strong match for someone looking for a streamlined, no-frills therapy experience that they can access from anywhere. It’s especially helpful for those who may need psychiatry services in addition to therapy because the platform combines both under one roof. We were also very impressed with Cerebral’s couples therapy and think it could be a great option for couples looking for a convenient, easy-to-use platform.

The limited ability to choose a therapist — as in my case, being assigned one by the platform rather than being given multiple options — may also be a meaningful drawback for some clients. There were also quite a few things I wasn’t comfortable with regarding Cerebral’s business practices — between reading the fine print of its terms and conditions to researching its previous settlements to my own experience receiving Cerebral’s excessive marketing emails and texts.

Still, the fact that Julia Pelly enjoyed her couples therapy sessions so much that she and her husband discussed continuing with the platform can’t be overstated, and we do believe that the service could be a valuable resource to many therapy seekers.

Everyday Health works to provide honest reviews of more than 65 online therapy services by using testers from a variety of demographics, backgrounds, and professions. Testers try the services themselves for a period of four weeks, collecting data on the sign-up and intake process as well as the overall therapeutic experience.

The personal experiences of testers contribute qualitative data to the quantitative data we gather through user surveys. We evaluate online therapy services on the following factors: user experience, the sign-up process, whether it allows you to choose or change your therapist, additional resources offered, therapist credentials and quality, the company’s commitment to ethical care, customer service, therapy modalities, average cost, and whether it accepts insurance.

My experience as an individual who has attended therapy for the past 11 years as well as a therapist who offers telehealth services enhanced my ability to evaluate the effectiveness of Cerebral’s online therapy services in a variety of ways. While testing Cerebral, I considered the following:

• The ease of sign-up
• User experience in navigating the website and the app
• Transparency with pricing
• Whether we experienced technical issues during therapy sessions
• Average cost per session
• Variety and quality of resources available between sessions
• Ability to schedule based on my availability
• Qualifications of the therapists for individual and couples therapy
• Number and demographics of therapists to choose from
• Customer service features
• Ability to switch therapists as I saw fit
• Company reputation and credibility