Best Online Therapy With Insurance

Teladoc isn’t solely a mental healthcare provider. It delivers a range of telehealth services including primary care, online dietitian services, and STD testing. However, this breadth doesn’t take away from its mental healthcare services. The company not only addresses common concerns such as anxiety and depression, but also treats post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and mood swings, and offers couples therapy.

You can choose your therapist and/or psychiatrist and continue to meet with either on an ongoing basis. You don’t have to worry that your provider won’t be qualified to address your particular needs, because you choose from provider options that Teladoc has deemed will fit your specific case. Teladoc's therapists employ a range of scientifically supported treatment techniques such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT). 

While Teladoc psychiatrists can’t prescribe controlled substances, and the platform doesn’t treat less common mental health conditions (such as psychosis or eating disorders), Teladoc is a great place to start if you’re looking for online mental health care that accepts your insurance.

Teladoc is a pay per-session service. Depending on your insurance, therapy sessions cost $0 to $99 and a psychiatry visit costs $0 to $299. Teladoc accepts 60 different insurance plans in total. This includes major providers like Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, Medicare, and Medicaid plans. The full list of accepted insurance providers is not available until you register.

An overwhelming 97% of the users we surveyed rated Teladoc as good, very good, or excellent overall. Furthermore, 80% of users said that their provider met most or all of their needs. This is slightly higher than the 77% average number for all companies surveyed. In our survey, 82% of Teladoc users used insurance to pay for services.

Talkiatry is the best for virtual psychiatric care because it prioritizes patient care by connecting you to qualified psychiatrists and allowing them to spend the amount of time with you needed to truly evaluate your needs. Robert Krayn and psychiatrist Georgia Gaveras, DO, founded Talkiatry after Krayn realized how financially inaccessible psychiatric care is: He paid $400 to see a psychiatrist after experiencing a home invasion. 

One of Talkiatry’s stand-out features is that your first appointment with a provider is an hour long. This allows providers to treat more complex conditions such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and bipolar disorder. The company is also one of the few virtual mental health providers that treats children and adolescents. 

Although Talkiatry does offer talk therapy, you need a referral from one of its psychiatrists to receive it. Given Talkiatry’s dedication to quality care and the range of services, it is the ideal online psychiatric provider if you live in one of the 19 states it serves.

Talkiatry only accepts patients via insurance. Your rate for treatment will depend on your plan’s copay or coinsurance rates. Talkiatry doesn’t post its out-of-pocket fees on its website, but you can input your insurance information before signing up in order to get an estimate of your copay. Talkiatry accepts plans from five of the biggest health insurance providers: Aetna, Blue Cross, Cigna, Optum, and Medicare.

Overall, 95% of the users we surveyed said that their experience at Talkiatry was good, very good or excellent. In addition, 87% of respondents said they would recommend Talkiatry to a friend, and 85% said that Talkiatry was better or much better than similar services they used in the past. What’s more, 89% of users rated its medication management services positively, and 86% rated prescriber qualifications positively.

Brightside Health is our choice for those with anxiety and depression because it uses data combined with a multi-level approach to care to treat anxiety, depression, and related disorders. Its mission is to establish a higher standard of care for these disorders so that everyone can access effective mental healthcare. 

Brightside uses cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)—a treatment approach that helps you reframe problematic thinking and behavioral patterns in order to improve mental health. The company offers four different treatment plans: talk therapy alone, medication management alone, talk therapy and medication management combined, and crisis care for those at risk of suicide.

As a patient, you regularly fill out surveys to track your symptoms so that you and your team know whether treatment is working. Furthermore, the psychiatric team uses data in order to choose which medication may be best for you. Brightside Health also offers interactive lessons that teach coping skills so that you have the tools to manage your mental health even when your provider is unavailable. 

Brightside’s crisis care plan for those at risk of suicide is a unique offering among online therapy providers. It employs a strategy known as collaborative assessment and management of suicidality (CAMS), a technique endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While experts have historically advised against virtual services for those at risk of suicide, telehealth is now being used to effectively treat conditions that were previously thought to only respond to in-person care, such as eating disorders. While we advise you to proceed with caution if you’re considering Brightside's crisis care plan, it may be a good option if you live in a rural area and struggle to access other forms of mental health care, or if a crisis phone line like 988 does not feel like enough support or if you are concerned about police involvement.   

Brightside Health does not treat ADHD, severe eating disorders, substance use disorders, or those with psychotic symptoms. However, even if you have severe depression and/or anxiety, Brightside Health could be the right place to address your mental health needs.

The crisis care plan is only available via insurance. In addition to HSA/FSA payments, Brightside Health accepts insurance plans from Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, and Anthem.

If you pay out of pocket, there are four plans to choose from:

• Medication-only plan: $95 per month
• Therapy-only plan: $299 per month which includes one session per week; additional therapy sessions are $59 each 
• Medication and therapy plan: $349 per month 
  

Our surveyed users consistently rated Brightside Health highly: 90% rated their overall experience positively, and 93% said that its medication management services were good, very good, or excellent. Of those who discontinued therapy, 77% said it was because they either met their therapeutic goals or they felt better and felt like they no longer needed therapy.

In its own words, "Talkspace's mission is to make therapy and psychiatry more available and affordable.” It does this, in part, by centering your communication preferences and needs. The company allows you to choose how you want to contact your therapist. For example, if you only want to message your provider because voice conversations are inaccessible to you, you can subscribe to the messaging-only service rather than paying for both messaging and video chats. Furthermore, if you want to communicate with a broader range of people, you can subscribe to a plan that includes messaging, video chats, and weekly group workshops. 

Talkspace’s providers specialize in a wide range of issues including eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and substance use disorders. It also offers couples therapy, therapy for adolescents, and medication management (although it doesn't prescribe controlled substances). It's one of the only services that combine convenient communication options with truly specialized care covered by insurance.

Although there is no free trial available, Talkspace’s prices make it accessible to those who want to dip their toes into therapy. When paying out of pocket, Talkspace offers three payment options, each with different features:

• Messaging-only plan: Starts at $69 per week
• Live therapy plan: Includes messaging and four live sessions; starts at $99 per week
• Video, live therapy, and workshop plan: $109 per week 

Those needing psychiatric care will pay a much higher price. An initial evaluation costs $249 (if paid out-of-pocket), and follow-up sessions begin at $125 each

Talkspace accepts most major insurance plans, including Medicaid and Medicare. The company asserts that 40 million Americans are eligible to access its services via their insurance. You can enter your insurance information to check if it accepts your particular plan during sign-up.

Half of the users we surveyed said they would likely still be with their Talkspace therapist six months from now. While that seems low, it’s higher than the 42% average across users of all the services we surveyed. Furthermore, 90% rated their experience with the service as good, very good, or excellent overall, and 78% said their provider met all or most of their needs.

Alcohol use disorder (AUD), like all substance use disorders, is complex but treatable if all of its components are addressed. This is where Monument comes in. Founded by Mike Russell after medication helped him recover from AUD, Monument understands that medication can be an important part of addressing the disorder. In addition to providing talk therapy, it also offers the medications naltrexone (which diminishes alcohol cravings) and disulfiram (which causes you to feel hung over very shortly after drinking). 

Anyone struggling with alcohol use can access Monument's forums and support groups. Because you can pick and choose which services you use, you just pay for what you can afford, and you also have the option to receive support outside Monument while using their other services. For example, if you want to keep seeing your current therapist but receive Monument’s medication offerings, you can choose its physician care plan and skip therapy services. 

Although Monument’s therapists can address co-existing disorders (such as anxiety), its physicians do not prescribe medication to treat these conditions, and it's unclear whether any of its therapists specialize in them. Furthermore, Monument is only available in the following states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Monument’s support groups and online group forums are free. If you only want access to medication, you can pay $45 initially and then $10 per month after that for one appointment with your physician. Individual talk therapy is $149 per month if you want two appointments per month or $249 if you want four appointments per month. Cost will also be dependent on your insurance provider’s rules on mental health coverage and frequency of allowable visits. If you choose talk therapy, you also get unlimited appointments with your physician. 

Monument accepts the following insurance plans:

• Aetna
• Anthem
• Optum/UnitedHealthcare
• Blue Cross Blue Shield 
• Medicare
• Cigna

Seventy-three percent of Monument’s users said that their providers met most or all of their needs, and 77% rated provider qualifications positively. And, if you’re interested in the medication services, it’s reassuring that 75% of users rated these services as good, very good, or excellent, and 74% rated prescriber bedside manner positively.

Thriveworks offers struggling families a range of options to treat their children’s mental health conditions. Founded by psychologist A.J. Centore, PhD, Thriveworks aims to meet all of its patients' mental healthcare needs by allowing them to choose from a vast array of care options. In addition to a weekly video therapy option, Thriveworks also has over 380 in-person therapy centers you and your child can visit. 

Thriveworks providers specialize in a wide variety of conditions and issues. This means that they can address your teen’s depression and your elementary schooler’s PTSD while also offering you and your partner couples therapy. Furthermore, Thriveworks also has pediatric psychiatrists who can manage your child’s medication. The company serves children well by enabling the entire family to receive the mental healthcare they need. 

Thriveworks' online care is available in all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., and you can receive in-person care everywhere except New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia.

Different Thriveworks providers accept different insurance plans. Fortunately, you can filter therapists by what insurance plans they accept. Options include:

• Aetna
• Blue Cross Blue Shield
• Cigna | Evernorth
• Compsych
• Humana
• Medicare
• Optum/UnitedHealthcare

Ninety percent of Thriveworks users rated their experience with the company as good, very good, or excellent overall, and 86% said it was better than similar services they’d tried in the past. Half of all users said it was likely or very likely that they would be seeing the same therapist a year from now, and 67% of Thriveworks clients we surveyed used health insurance to access therapy there.

Doctor On Demand allows patients access to specialized care without the hassle. Signing up is as simple as creating a password and completing a screening. You can either choose your own provider or let the system do the work for you by matching you with one. While the company doesn’t offer features such as unlimited messaging or a subscription service, this makes navigating its system simple. 

Furthermore, while Doctor on Demand doesn’t treat more severe disorders such as schizophrenia, it does offer specialized care in areas such as postpartum depression, anger management, and PTSD. This means that finding a therapist who understands your specific situation is straightforward.

Doctor On Demand accepts most major insurance plans as well as Medicare. Like many services, a list of accepted insurance plans is not available until you start the sign-up process, where you select your insurance from a drop-down menu. If you don’t have insurance, the rates are high:

• Therapy: A 25-minute session costs $129; a 50-minute session costs $179
• Psychiatry: An initial appointment costs $299; 15-minute follow-ups are $129

Most of our surveyed users found the sign-up process to be straightforward, with 71% saying it was easy or very easy. Furthermore, 75% said that they found a therapist who met most or all of their needs, and 94% rated their overall experience with Doctor on Demand positively. In all, 58% of the Doctor on Demand users we surveyed said they used insurance to access this service.

Amwell has an array of affordable options for therapy and psychiatry, including therapists in each state trained in treating children and teens ages 10 to 17 (with parental or guardian consent) and adults 18 and up. Scheduling is very flexible with same-day or next-day appointments offered in many major metropolitan areas. One of our users located in Los Angeles was able to schedule a next-day appointment with ease via the website. 

Psychiatrists can prescribe many mental health medications, though cannot provide prescriptions for narcotics and other controlled substances, such as Adderall, Ambien, Ativan, or Xanax. Psychiatric sessions last about 15 to 30 minutes and are conducted via video chat through the Amwell website or app. Amwell is in-network with over 125 insurance providers and will bill your carrier directly.

Insurance is accepted, but not required. Over 125 plans are accepted, including:

• Aetna 
• Anthem
• Blue Cross Blue Shield
• Affinity
• Amerigroup
• Healthfirst
• Horizon
• UnitedHealthcare

Without insurance, pricing is as follows:

• Therapy: $99 or less per appointment
• Psychiatry: $279 for initial visit, $109 for 15-minute follow-up visits

Eighty-eight percent of users reported a positive experience with Amwell overall, and 86% of users said their provider met all or most of their needs. What’s more, 91% of Amwell users rated therapist qualifications as good to excellent. Seventy percent said they would continue their search through Amwell if they needed a new therapist. When asked about insurance status, 57% of Amwell users said they had private or employer-sponsored health insurance, and 34% had Medicare/Medicaid. Of those, 61% said they used insurance to help them pay for services at Amwell. Finally, 26% of Amwell users cited insurance acceptance as one of the factors they considered when looking for a therapy service.