Contact Headspace Care Ginger Support

Ginger is a decent concept for people with mild mental health issues but the execution just fails to deliver in my eyes. The coaches often find themselves having to chat with multiple clients at once. On the flipside, the client then goes to other applications on their phone while awaiting a reply, taking them out of the moment. It’s a disruptive, bumpy process. Video chatting is an option for those who seek therapy over coaching; however access to therapy is capped after two months so how deep can you really get? The main resource upon which Ginger is built is the catalog of self-help cards. These are generally 3-5 page reads with bullet points that are grounded in science but so generic and common-sense sounding that most will just skim them without driving much benefit. There are some cards with audio portions as well. To those who enjoy such meditations, this might be helpful. As Headspace and Ginger integrate further, perhaps this will become a more prevalent feature. For coaches, this is definitely a preferable app to something like Talkspace (formerly talktala), but there are plenty of ways to run a remote practice now on your own. For prospective clients, if your employer offers ginger at no cost, then they likely offer other health benefits that will enable you to see an individual therapist (even remotely) at little to no cost outside of this app. Have your therapist work for you, not for a tech company. All the best 🤗

I’m thoroughly unimpressed with this app/service. The coach I was assigned was slightly late for our first scheduled meeting a few weeks ago, nearly 10 minutes late for our 30 minute meeting the next week and then just didn’t even show up/check in for our next meeting. Scheduling with a therapists was also a nightmare. You have to text with member support to schedule your initial therapy intake. They began with messaging me to get me on the schedule only to take hours to reply to my response and this has been fairly consistently happening throughout trying to schedule this. It took two days to get a date scheduled with a therapist, with them offering me dates and times for me to respond that that date works only for them to respond hours later that it’s no longer available. This would have been a quick process on the phone or on a live chat where the representative is giving you their immediate attention for the time it takes to select the date. I honestly think companies would be better off putting the money they pay for this service in their employee’s HSA to use towards a better suited mental health support program/service.

With less than 24 hours to go before my “intake” appointment, I received a message from Member Support stating that my appointment had been canceled, because the therapist was no longer with the company. There is a cancellation policy for patients, which states that they will be charged $125 for canceling within 24 hours of an appointment, and I had scheduled this appointment over two months ago, because this was the first available appointment. I hope you can understand how disappointing it is to have less notification than what is being demanded of patients. It is difficult to believe that Ginger didn’t have the opportunity to reschedule or give me more notice of cancellation. However, if that is the case, I’m not sure why anyone would expect to be seen in a reasonable amount of time. That being said, Coaching (which is different than therapy) on Ginger is fantastic and has made a tangible positive impact in my life. I have had no problem scheduling coaching sessions and am able to text with someone weekly. That person also responds outside of our scheduled discussions.