Teen Counseling Review

In This Article

Teen Counseling is an online platform designed for teens aged 13-19 as a way for them to gain access to a licensed therapist online. Teens can access the company’s discrete and professional platform through a computer, tablet, or smartphone and gain unprecedented access to a fully licensed therapist who can help provide them with the counseling they need. The company also has special services for parents and guardians who are looking to get their children the help they need.

Company Overview

TeenCounseling.com is one of several therapy brands owned by BetterHelp. The platform was founded in 2013 with a simple mission; to help teenagers who need it the most. Teen Counseling is not meant to replace human-to-human interactions, but instead, help make it easier for teens from all over the country to get access to this type of personal care. More than 16,000 licensed counselors are available through TeenCounseling.com, all of whom have experience in working with teens.

The company’s goal is to help teenagers cope with various issues such as anxiety, stress, self-esteem, depression, bullying, eating disorders, relationships, or anger.

Pricing

TeenCounseling.com work via an online subscription model. The cost ranges from $60-$90 per week, billed every 4 weeks. This includes a weekly live video or phone session that lasts 3o to 45 minutes. Also included is unlimited messaging with your therapist. The pricing tends to fluctuate regularly, though overall, the pricing is competitive when compared with other providers of online therapy. While they do not accept insurance, they do offer financial aid for those that qualify.

Signing Up

Signing up with Teen Counseling is simple. The first thing that users will likely notice is that there is a different signup process for both parents and teens. The platform is straightforward, easy to use, and simple to navigate. This is the basic structure of how the process works:

• You fill out a questionnaire and provide basic information regarding your situation.
• You are matched with a licensed therapist who specializes in teens.
• If you are a parent, you discuss your child’s issues and situations with a therapist first and then approve of the therapist. The therapist is then connected with your child.
• Your child uses an app provided by Teen Counseling.com to communicate with the therapist.
• The therapist is able to interact with your child over phone, text and video.
• The entire counseling session remains confidential, but the therapist will be able to alert parents if an intervention is required.

You begin with a questionnaire, where you dictate whether you are a parent, guardian, or teen that needs help. After asking several simple but informative questions, the site will automatically direct you to a page where you can sign up.

Once you provide your basic contact information, the website will match you with a licensed, board-certified therapist who can help. The company has a secure, HIPAA-compliant system.

Then you are led to the secured payment page. After entering in payment details, your child will be matched with a therapist. If you are not happy, you can always request a new therapist. Once payment has been submitted, teens will be able to access their therapist through their phone app or the online platform.

Ease of Use

Getting started with Teen Counseling is simple. The site will guide you through every question and all of the details of getting started—but that isn’t where the company’s usability features end.

You can easily access all of the communication platforms available through Teen Counseling by logging right online to their website and entering your credentials into their interface. Once logged in, you will be able to enter into your easy-to-navigate and simple, private counseling room. This counseling room is meant only for teens and their counselors. Parents will not have access to these rooms.

These rooms are structured similarly to Google chat or Skype and are meant to be a private, safe and secure place for teens to communicate with their counselors. The platform does a great job of making all of its different methods of communication, including live chat, messaging, video sessions, and phone calls, extremely user-friendly, even for those who aren’t particularly tech-savvy.

Teen Counseling Usability

The room is open 24/7, so teens can always send messages if and when they want—even if their counselor isn’t available at that specific time. Teen Counseling also offers a free app for both iOS and Android.

Counselor Support

When teens sign up to use Teen Counseling, they will be assigned one single counselor to work with. This allows the teen to develop a closer relationship with their assigned professional.

They can communicate one-on-one with licensed counselors through messaging chats, phone calls, or video conferences, right from their smartphones or computers and in an environment that they feel comfortable in.

The counselors are all licensed and credentialed therapists—and while they can offer many of the same benefits that teens get during traditional in-person therapy, they do not offer all of the same services. Through the Teen Counseling app, counselors will not be able to make any official diagnosis, fulfill court orders or prescribe medications. Teens and their parents must understand these limitations before they begin.

Counseling through this platform is provided in four convenient ways, allowing teens to choose how they would like to engage in their counseling sessions. These include:

• Exchanging messages with a counselor through the messaging platform, similar to email.
• Chatting live with the counselor during a scheduled live chat session.
• Video conferencing with a counselor.
• Speaking over the phone with a counselor.

One of the best things about Teen Counseling is that teens are allowed to use as many of these different communication methods as they want, as many times as they want. All four methods are included in the monthly membership rate and no additional charges are incurred, no matter how many live sessions teens book or how many messages they send.

Confidentiality & Privacy

Teen Counseling takes several steps to ensure the utmost safety, privacy, and confidentiality of its customer’s data. Messages between you and your counselor are encrypted with bank-grade 256-bit encryption. Also, since the counselors are state certified, they are subject to strict local and federal privacy laws, including HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). Your medical and other health information is private and is not shared with insurance companies either since Teen Counseling doesn’t take or work with insurance companies.

There are other steps the platform takes to ensure that its users are staying protected. When a user schedules a phone session through the platform, the system calls the teen at their provided number, meaning their personal contact information is never given to the counselor.

Teen Counseling – Getting Help

When you talk with the counselor, all of the information shared is kept entirely private, even from parents. In fact, parents are not allowed into the private counseling rooms for teens and their counselors. It is meant to be a safe space. While the platform and the counselors working through it will keep all information completely private, there are a few exceptions that are designed to help protect you and others. This includes:

• If you are planning on hurting yourself or committing suicide.
• If you are planning on hurting others.
• If you share information indicating you know someone is being abused or neglected.
• If you share information stating an individual under 18 is being abused or neglected.
• If you share information indicating an elderly person is being abused or neglected.

These exceptions are detailed on the Teen Counseling website and are made clear to all users so they know of situations where their private discussions may need to be exposed to others. Overall, the platform does a wonderful job of keeping information secure and private, and in providing teens with the information they need to understand what information will be kept private and what will not.

Counselor Qualifications

All counselors available through Teen Counseling are licensed, trained, and accredited at the state level. The counselors are independent professionals and are thoroughly vetted, however, they are not employees of Teen Counseling. The team of experts are includes:

• Psychologists (Ph.D/Psy.D)
• Marriage and Family Therapists (LMFT)
• Clinical Social Workers (LCSW)
• Professional Counselors (LPC)

Due to the structure of this counseling service, while these professionals will be able to provide advice, they will not be able to prescribe medication or give official diagnoses through this platform.

Meet the Counselors

Once you have filled out your initial questionnaire, the platform will take a look at the answers to your questions and match you with a counselor based on the type of issues reported in the original inquiry. This way, teens will be matched with someone who has the training and experience necessary to provide them with the specific type of counseling they are looking for.

Specialties & Areas of Expertise

Teen Counseling is designed with teens in mind, which is why it covers so many areas of mental health, all of which are common issues that teenagers today can face. The goal of Teen Counseling is to help young people with many types of issues which include but are not limited to:

• Anxiety
• Stress
• Self-esteem
• Depression
• Bullying
• Anger
• Eating Disorders

If you are struggling with a topic that isn’t listed, it is still a smart idea to reach out to Teen Counseling to see if one of their trained professionals can help. According to the company, signing up for this platform is not the right solution if any of the following is true: you have thoughts of hurting yourself or others, you are in an emergency situation, you are required to undergo court-ordered therapy or counseling, or if you are unable to reliably log on to the internet. Teen Counseling does a great job of detailing who the site is for and what it is not for, to help make sure all teens interested in getting help are going to the right source for assistance.

Bottom Line

There are so many teens out there who need professional counseling, but who are unsure of how to contact a professional for help. Teen Counseling fills this void for many teens who need this type of help. They don’t just offer teens access to an adult, but they also provide teens with person-to-person interactions with fully accredited and licensed mental health professionals. The unique thing about this platform is that it not only provides a discrete and convenient way for teens to get help—through the devices that they already use every day—but it can also help parents as well. The website makes it easy for parents to get started so they can step in and make sure their kids are getting the private, personal counseling that they need.