Navigating Reviews in the Context of Mental Health Services

This post was originally published at Therahive.com

In today's digital age, reviews have become a cornerstone of consumer decision-making. Whether you're selecting a restaurant, a new gadget, or even a mental health service, reviews often play a crucial role in guiding your choice. However, when it comes to mental health services, understanding what reviews really mean—and how to interpret them—requires a nuanced approach.

What Positive Reviews Really Tell You

It’s natural to assume that a slew of positive reviews means a mental health provider is a great choice. While positive reviews do indicate that some customers had a good experience, they don't necessarily represent the majority. A few glowing testimonials might suggest that a handful of clients felt satisfied, but this doesn’t guarantee that most people had the same experience.

To get a clearer picture, it’s helpful to look at the ratio of negative to positive reviews. If you see a high number of negative reviews in comparison, it could indicate that a significant portion of clients were dissatisfied. However, it's also important to take this data with a grain of salt. Many companies are adept at soliciting positive reviews, often encouraging satisfied customers to share their experiences online, which can skew perceptions.

The Ethical Considerations: APA Guidance on Soliciting Reviews

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) offers guidance on soliciting reviews, particularly for individual providers. They caution that soliciting reviews may conflict with the ethical provision of care, highlighting that it could put undue pressure on clients or compromise the therapeutic relationship. This guidance is particularly relevant for individual mental health providers, where maintaining boundaries is crucial for effective treatment.

TheraHive’s Position on Reviews: Why We Value Your Feedback

At TheraHive, we want to be clear: We are not a therapy service, and our reviews are not based on individual providers but rather on our program as a whole. Because of this distinction, the APA’s guidance on soliciting reviews doesn’t technically apply to us. Additionally, while we do survey our students about their experiences with our coaches to provide feedback and improve our coaching staff, these surveys are not made public. Part of the value we offer includes robust vetting and training of our coaches to ensure they meet our high standards.

Given the complexity of navigating mental health, we believe that reviews can be incredibly helpful—especially when they focus on our service offerings as a whole. We encourage feedback on our programs to help prospective students understand the overall experience we provide.

Understanding the Diverse Needs of TheraHive Students

TheraHive supports a wide range of students, each with their own unique mental health goals. Some students come to us to address acute issues, while others are looking to level up their mental health skills to enhance their performance at work or achieve personal life goals. Regardless of their starting point, all our students engage in our Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills programs to improve their ability to manage emotions.

We’ve seen that students dealing with more acute issues are prone to having strong emotional reactions if/when our program does not meet their expectations in some way. This is particularly upsetting because they’ve typically come to our program because they want to temper exactly these kinds of intense and ineffective reactions!?

If you’re considering our program we may have shared this post with you to avoid such an issue! Some students don’t fully review our website, review our terms of service, or meet with us to address all their questions before joining … we encourage you to do so!?

Here are the three most common details that students overlook that lead to strong negative responses. We’ve worked to make this prominent on our website and we mention them when we host enrollment calls … and still some students get surprised after completing enrollment:

1. Non-Refundable Tuition Deposits: Our tuition deposits are non-refundable because we cannot resell a spot that we’ve committed to a student. Also, if you pay up front for our program you’ll get a discount but the tuition is non-refundable. We understand that it’s not possible to know fully up front if our program is the right fit, so if you have doubts, consider buying just a single module to get started.
2. Requirements for Live Sessions: We require that all students attend all live sessions with their cameras on. Of course, we understand that life happens so if you miss an occasional live session that’s not a problem. But if you are not willing to consistently attend, you should not enroll in our program.?
3. Enrollment Process and Wait Times: We add students to groups at the transitions between modules when there is an open spot in the group. For this reason, you may need to wait a few weeks to start a group. Our ability to start new groups really depends on how many prospective students happen to want to start at the same time … so we appreciate your patience!

With this context in mind, if you run into any negative TheraHive reviews consider discounting the most extreme negative one when evaluating our programs. Of course, the same kind of thing applies to other programs you may be researching. And always read the FAQs that companies post about their services, they usually answer these kinds of questions.