Headspace Care (Ginger) Reviews

So I found Ginger when my doctor’s office referred me and my insurance said it’s a company they go through for care. It was a little tough for me at first because I really knew nothing about behavioral and mental health but it was eye opening once I started. It’s great to have an actual team, yes an actual team of people working together to focus on helping me improve my health. I can meet with all of them virtually so long as I had access to internet or cell phone signal. I video chat with a therapist to work through what’s causing my health issues , I video chat with psychiatrist about medications I’m using with my treatment and I text-chat with a wellness coach weekly to work through actions, habits and thoughts that help with my care. They all can read the notes the other ones write about my care and can work with me on anything I need help with to improve my health. Also whenever I’ve had a more pressing concern I have the ability to contact member services and they have worked with my care team to get me information or care sooner if I was in between appointments. For what I’m going through and in this time of pandemic Ginger’s convenience and structure has helped pick me up from probably one of the most difficult places I’ve ever been in my life. So I’m just thankful for it.

The mere condition of the American health care system (with all of its inefficiencies, bureaucratic loopholes, exorbitant prices, and corporate insensitivity) is enough to give people mental illness. But ginger is such a breath of fresh air that is making some serious steps to provide meaningful care for Americans. This is a system that genuinely thinks about user needs and is using technology to cater to people, not to exploit them. It is so easy to set up, the customer support is amazing, and they’ve really developed good systems to bring consistent support to your care. Not only has it been significantly to book sessions with a therapist (no wait period plus crazy flexibility), there are other elements like coaching and exercises that provide nearly round the clock attention in a sustainable fashion. This is a mental health service that understands the complexities of modern, hectic life and brings the care to you on your terms. Frankly, the sense of control I feel just in my experience of navigating my health has contributed to me feeling more in control of the rest of my life. Plus, my insurance covers 100% of it. I know this sounds like a marketing pitch and I am going off on listing adjectives, but please do not take my passion for insincerity. I am just so grateful for ginger and think this could be a huge help for millennials (and gen z-ers) like me!

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 HeadspaceCareGinger. Have your therapist work for you, not for a tech company. All the best 🤗

I’m thoroughly unimpressed with HeadspaceCareGinger/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.

My first coach took forever to text back so over the course of our 40 min initial session, we probably exchanged about 20 texts so it was hard to stay engaged. She was clearly copy pasting her texts from something because of the grammar and typos (e.g., “Ask them how they feel about…”). Then, she pretty much ghosted and was impossible to track down. I needed more support and accountability than “reach out to me when you want to chat.” The second coach has been better because we actually scheduled standing check-ins but it still feels a little gimmicky with more or less boiler plate responses and lack of deep knowledge in psychology. My biggest gripe is that HeadspaceCareGinger isn’t iPad compatible/keyboard compatible. I have a disease that sometimes makes it hard to stare at a screen and type on the phone. Sessions would also go much faster if I could use a keyboard.

PLEASE make HeadspaceCareGinger keyboard accessible!

Also have had many glitches with scheduling and random coaches being added to my team. If they could fix HeadspaceCareGinger and hire more competent people I’d raise my rating.

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.

Ginger is really quite amazing. I’ve seen many therapists and psychiatrists throughout the years, and it has historically been nearly impossible to get the various mental health professionals helping you through tough times to communicate with each other and to work as a team to help you resolve issues. Ginger offers a platform where you can get all the help you need in one place, and where that information is shared between the various professionals easily. No repeating forms, re-explaining histories and issues, and disjointed care. The ability to talk with coaches who are on call when needed is an amazing perk! I’m so glad I decided to give Ginger a try when I saw that my health insurance plan had teamed up with them for mental health benefits. The check-in reminders do a great job of helping you see your progress along the way. I’m a fan!

The most amazing thing about ginger is that you have 3 coaches with different weekly schedules, so that you have someone to chat with by text at almost any moment. If they’re not available and you really need someone, you can opt to talk with a temporary coach that’s on too. Additionally you have zoom chats with a counselor consistently for a little deeper dive. You can switch coaches if you need to or are searching for better compatibility. I find that having someone to chat with right away, helps with changing your thought patterns since you’re able to recognize it and adjust in the moment, instead of waiting a week to hopefully remember those little things when your actual appointment comes up. The coaches are highly supportive and professional too.

To be upfront - I only gave one life coach a shot before giving up but I could tell right away this wasn’t for me. I think HeadspaceCareGinger is a great idea in theory, but in actuality it’s like having a conversation with a friend who’s texting someone else or playing a game while you talk: there’s a huge lag in response time, they’re only half-listening, and the feedback is usually not even on topic. I was hopeful that at the very least my coach would steer me in the right direction of a therapist but they just responded that I needed to do that myself. If I was well enough to do that myself, I wouldn’t be texting my employer’s suggested life coach... I asked for genuine help in a field that my coach supposedly specialized in... but we never even discussed it because their responses were so delayed that we barely got past formalities in my 30 minutes. 2 stars instead of 1 because I could have tried another coach I guess.

This service is fabulous for coaching and therapy. The staff is professional and is exceptional at handling mental health issues. I can’t say enough good things about the service.

Where HeadspaceCareGinger and service fails is the inability to view billing history. There’s no documented invoice available to submit for HSA/FSA/insurance claims as part of HeadspaceCareGinger . No live person picks up the phone at the hard to find customer service line. Billing details are obscure and inconsistent. Payment processing is worse. There’s no terms for payment. Is it 15 days, 30 days, etc.? It’s standard for medical/mental health services to provide consistent and accessible billing documentation/processing for patient inquiries/history. This isn’t even meeting the basics of medical billing.

This service is one my employer offered and I took advantage of. The billing/payment aspect is such a deterrent to the entire service offered. This would be a 5 star app if it weren’t lacking so badly in billing.

I tried this because it was covered by my insurance. Had to wait a full week of the 90-days covered to get my first chat session. That seemed to go well and my coach gave me homework which I diligently did and kept notes on what worked and what didn’t. Scheduled time off work for my second scheduled session a week later. When I logged in my coach was offline and there was no notification or notice about why. Customer service was entirely unhelpful and didn’t seem to understand why having a coach completely flaked on a scheduled session was a problem. They eventually transferred me to a different coach who was also unhelpful and didn’t understand why I was reluctant to trust HeadspaceCareGinger again when they failed so completely in very basic professionalism and decency. Totally waste of time and a waste of time off work for a scheduled appointment. I’m now worse off than when I started using HeadspaceCareGinger for coaching.

From the little I experienced, this was pretty terrible. I didn’t even get to a therapist so that’s why I gave it two starts instead of one. I was referred by my doctor. Multiple messages and kept getting a “you’ll get a therapist soon” message. Then my dog died and I was struggling and messaged them again and said I need someone now.. got a message that they would “move me up the list”. Nothing for another two months... I get that therapists are in demand right now but don’t accept new people if you aren’t going to be able to help them. 4 months of waiting after asking for help while struggling mentally is a horrible feeling. Therapists might be good but I don’t know because I never got that far, no of my own choice. The initial process is less than 1 star. Oh, and my coach forgot about our meeting. Nothing like the feeling of being forgotten when you’re struggling. Yep, zero stars.

First of all, it takes forever to get set up with the initial appointment. There are rarely any therapists available, so if you’re looking for someone to help you out quickly, this is not your place.

Secondly, the customer service representatives are hit or miss. I’ve had some nice ones, but others are snarky and will just straight up not do what they said they’re going to do. I had tried to book an appointment and had confirmed the date and time with customer service, and then they scheduled me for a different date that I had specifically said I could not attend. When I brought up the error to them, they told me the appointment we had originally agreed upon was filled and there was nothing they could do, so I’m having to wait an extra 3 weeks for my appointment because of Ginger’s mistake. If you ask them for a name so you can email about the incident, they refuse to provide it. Sloppy communication and poor customer service.

Lastly, HeadspaceCareGinger has severe glitches. I was unable to view messages from support but was getting notifications that I had messages. Could not view them. Ended up having to delete HeadspaceCareGinger and reinstall, then i was able to see the messages, but I had missed important, time-sensitive messages.

Lots of room for improvement, Ginger.

Summary: I have had 4 sessions canceled with no notice (once it was 15 minutes into my “session”) by two separate therapists. I have not been able to see anyone in 3 months.

I signed up through my insurance four months ago. The therapist I saw was great but she kept canceling sessions. She told me that she needed to lessen her client load (totally understandable) and would reassign me. She never started the process to reassign me. I reached out to support and followed up ever week for two months. They finally reassigned me only to be stood up by the first session and canceled on again for the rescheduled session.

I believe that the people or system scheduling the sessions are completely automated and do not check in with the therapist. It has been three months since I saw anyone and they have nothing new open to offer me.

I use to travel frequently for work and when I wasn’t traveling, finding parking downtown was never easy. Ginger has removed all the commute times, having to pay for parking, rescheduling due to traveling, and my therapist is great. HeadspaceCareGinger is combiner, it’s productive, I have action items and resources at my fingertips. If I do need to reschedule you can chat through HeadspaceCareGinger . I was worried about this being less personal but I actually find it more personal. I’m relaxed due to being in my own atmosphere and feel like my therapist and I are making progress quicker than I did with my previous therapist. I have no more excuses for not being able to attend. Give ginger a try, you won’t be disappointed!

There’s poor communication between Ginger and the actual therapists. You give them all your insurance information, and they still can’t tell you an exact cost. It’s all an estimate and a ballpark of what you might pay. On top of that I was told I was in-network and then everything was billed out-of network. I had to go back and forth between HeadspaceCareGinger and my insurance company to find out the therapist was out-of network. I wanted help to deal with my anxiety and depression, but this made it worse. I had an appointment that wasn’t communicated to my therapist even though I had a confirmation email, so I ended up having to reschedule, which then wasn’t set up on Ginger’s end so it had to get pushed back again. I advise just going through your insurance portal and finding a therapist that way because this is just going to add more issues to your mental health than help.

Extremely helpful if you’re motivated to help yourself and put in the work! Knowing there is 24/7 access to chat alone makes me feel I have a bit of security, even if I don’t use it as frequently as I think I need it. I’m able to send a message through chat when my coach is offline to get those intrusive, panicked/urgent thoughts off my chest. They usually respond much quicker than expected to support/put me at ease. So far my coach has been absolutely wonderful, responsive and insightful. Has been a positive experience for me, as I am ready to make changes and move forward.

The Ginger app was offered to me through my employer as a mental health benefit. I was enjoying using it for check-ins as HeadspaceCareGinger suggests. After about 3 months of using HeadspaceCareGinger pretty regularly, my “coach” (out of nowhere) let me know that I would be blocked from using HeadspaceCareGinger , and that the Ginger “clinical team” had deemed me not eligible to use their text based “coaching.” There was no explanation provided. Nothing inappropriate occurred up until that point and things were overall smooth. The only conclusion I can draw is that HeadspaceCareGinger has to discontinue users who regularly use HeadspaceCareGinger for cost purposes. However, this is something my employer pays for, but now for some unknown reason, I don’t have access to. I would not recommend HeadspaceCareGinger as they seem to pick and choose (of paying patients) who they *want* to work with and block others for no apparent reason.

This is a scam. Your counselor doesn’t care to listen how you reflect on the incidents you have experienced but sends you few pdf files to read and when you ask if they are not interested to listen to you, their response is “there is a difference between coaching and counseling” well played though. With nice lexical tricks, you’re selling your app and capitalize on people’s emotions. They apparently failed to charge my credit card but also send me countless e-mails to put my credit card info back in so they can take the outstanding amout… BUT GUESS WHAT… You can only put your card information if you want to buy another month of subscription. Geniuses! Seriously who came up with this ridiculous plan? If I am owed money to you, take it, I don’t want to keep it, but DO NOT TRY TO SELL ME ANOTHER MONTH OF SUBSCRIPTION THAT I DO NOT WANT BEFORE THAT.

They want $30 per month for info you can find on Google; “coaches” will only try to get you to form positive habits but won’t let you tell them about what you are feeling. A therapist was assigned and I guess didn’t want to help so she made believe her WiFi was not working then made believe she was trying to find another appointment slot (this after waiting three months for an appointment). She then texts me directly and became rude so I would change therapist instead of just saying she couldn’t help me. I must have touched something in her that bothered her (best guess). Oh! Good luck finding a psychiatrist. I bet they will now reach out and say, “We are sorry that your experience was negative. Please reach out and someone will definitely try their best to help.” Right . . . They really want the $30 per month—that’s it. Good luck!

I like HeadspaceCareGinger a lot. Super helpful tips and articles that are short, easy to follow and read. I gave it 4 stars because there is no website or horizontal view, which would make it much easier to type when talking to my coach! I like to pull HeadspaceCareGinger up on my iPad and connect to my keyboard, but because there’s no horizontal view (HeadspaceCareGinger doesn’t rotate), it’s a little difficult to message that way.

Since the only form of contact you have available to you as a patient is the member support chat - there is 0 accountability with administrative mistakes since you don’t know who you’re speaking to on the customer support team. They made a terrible mistake by informing me that I ran out of sessions when they had just told me that I had plenty of sessions left and made me cancel all of my sessions with my therapist due to an administrator’s misunderstanding that took me weeks to figure out. I kept following up during that time mentioning that I should have access to my sessions but they denied all my access and left me with zero follow up for weeks. What a shame to have terrible customer support on a mental health app where people need support the most.