CerebralReviews of cerebral.com

in my 6 months having this, i was unable to schedule appointments 2 months, my first therapist left the company for a better opportunity which should have been my first hint to cancel. my other two care people were both randomly changed, one once & the other 3 times. trying to schedule appointments was extremely difficult, never having any available ones open, after being asked what days would be good i’d be scheduled times that i was working or 10:45 pm when i have work at 4 am the next day. just overall not helpful to me & my needs. after canceling i was still billed for the month, not having any counseling done that month so just waisting 85$ in total 3 months. update** Stefanie has reached out to me & has tried her best to correct some of the issues i have had while having this, even tho i am not going to be rejoining i sincerely appreciate her help & reaching out to me so i have added a star because of her.

I've been using Cerebral since late October. In that time, I've been told several different things by my care coordinator and other support staff regarding my status with insurance. I was first told I was not in scope for therapy for my insurance, and that I could only get a care counselor and medication. Okay, so I went with that (I initially just wanted therapy, but I was desperate so I said yes). Then, I was told I can get therapy and medication. Great, I originally wanted just therapy but I was already on the meds so it was fine. Getting a therapist was like fighting tooth and nail for available spots. I was finally able to get one late December, and I saw her four times. Today I received an email from Cerebral support, telling me that my therapist is actually not in my insurance scope and that *surprise* I am actually not in scope for therapy at all due to my insurance. Seriously? I signed up for and pay for services to aid with my anxiety and depression. Dealing with this service has ADDED to my anxiety and depression, which is the opposite of what it advocates for. Let me make it clear: my therapist was great, she did nothing wrong. It's the lack of coordination within the company that has led me to write this review. I understand they are a budding company, but PLEASE do not jump the gun. These are people's lives we're talking about, people need help. Once I get some answers, I plan on switching to another service or finding a local therapist. If I knew I had to jump through so many hoops, I would have never signed up.

I have been treated for anxiety for 23 years, and depression for about 14 years. I have tried different medications over the years to aid me with these illnesses (always under the direct supervision of a prescribing medical professional). I have had to navigate through our terrible mental healthcare system multiple times, and have always felt let down by some aspect of it or another. Over the past year, my medications have not been helping as much as they previously were, so I started the arduous journey of switching my meds. The thought of having an app with my prescriber and therapist at my fingertips was seemed like a dream come true. A friend of mine who is an RN recommended in, and my sister also used it. I had a plan with my prescriber to taper off my old mental health medications, do a two day washout period, and then I'd start the new medication this past Sunday, January 16th. Last Thursday, January 13th, I was told my rx was already filled at my local pharmacy. I never received a message that my prescription had been filled (which if you have ever filled with Walgreens you would know how persistent they are at reminding you that you have a prescription ready) so I forgot about it until Sunday when I realized, in my still altered mental state, that I needed to start it that morning. In my unstable condition, that realization had me go immediately into a panic attack. Thankfully, someone in my support system went to pick it up for me. Unfortunately, it was not there, and that only made the panic worse. I spent the rest of the day crying off and on, panicking and then having to calm myself down, and trying to contact someone at Cerebral. The following day, I was able to get ready for work (preparing to return after a week long absence due to my instability during my med transition), but encountered just enough stressors prior to even getting out that door that I had another severe panic attack/ meltdown that then led me to call out of work (hysterically, I may add) and making my father take me to the behavioral urgent care. It was about 6:30am, on a holiday, so of course they weren't open, but I wasn't thinking straight and my father, God love him, does not know what to do in these situations. I refused to go to an ER. I texted the crisis line and followed their advice. I then spent the rest of the day, again, crying off and on, continually panicking and having to bring myself back down, sometimes not being able to and needing others help. My father was unable to work that night because of my instability. Due to this medication debacle starting on a Sunday, nothing could be done. The following day, the 17th, was MLK Jr day, so nothing could be done. The next day, yesterday, still nothing. It's now Wednesday. I had not heard from this company, besides auto-generated email responses and my previously scheduled care counselor visit I had Monday, with a care counselor who is no longer with the company only a day after my visit with her. I completely understand that my care counselor was unable to help me with the medication. I have been a certified veterinary technician for over a decade. I understand better than the average patient about what the pharmacies are going through currently, as well as the entire healthcare community. I finally heard back from my prescriber a bit ago, approximately 72 hours after I first sent them a message to notify them of their error. I was given a "sorry" and was told they would call in the prescription. I was then contacted by my new care counselor through the app that said "like I mentioned during our session" even though I have never spoken with this person before. My experience with Cerebral has been unacceptable, both from healthcare perspective as well as the customer service. I do not recommend people who are having more serious mental health issues to use this company.

They are constantly changing my therapist and messing up my medication . I’ve had delivery problems many twice where I’ve withdrawn from my medication due to their negligence. Honestly I haven’t canceled only because I have no other way to get my medication. They for sure pry on people who have mental illness because they know they can.

I love the idea of Cerebral. But there are consistently issues. 1) It's very difficult to get an appointment with your prescriber or counselor. Often, they will be booked for several months out. 2) Every month I receive a phone call from the pharmacy letting me know that my prescriber completely denied my refill or will not answer. I ask Cerebral's team about this and there's never any answers. I go several days without my prescriptions until the issue is resolved and the pattern continues. 3) The care counselors cancel last minute, don't login for appointments and the turn over rate is high. I've been assigned new care counselors several times in a short period of time. 4) When I do have an opportunity to meet with a care counselor, I can tell the care counselor wants to be done with the appointment as soon as possible. Questions like "Anything else?" every few minutes in the conversation is a normal occurrence. And the coping skills brainstormed are things like counting to 5. I'll continue to work with cerebral because I like the ability of not having to leave my home to receive assistance. But the constant inconvenient small things start to add up and I'm not are how much longer I'll be willing to sacrifice quality in exchange for some convenience sometimes.

I don’t know what happened. Everything was going great! I liked my care counselor and I was learning new ways to deal with everything. This month Cerebral ran into some kind of issue with my medication which doesn’t make sense. Well, this will be the third week without medication. Currently, paying for Cerebral and not receiving half of the services. I guess keep this in mind… this is counterproductive to mental health, lol. It took me months to build that medication in my system and it was just taken away for no reason. They’re working on it, I guess. Doesn’t change the fact that I feel like now I have to start over and the last 6 months were a waste. Tried to contact someone other than my care counselor (I like her, but I don’t know that there’s much she can do about medication?) I want this resolved!!!!! Can’t get it resolved. Just waiting. Waiting to start this up again. Beware. Edit: Hey, yeah delays in medication are really upsetting… Waiting 4 days on a prescription (That had a current refill, no less) is pretty unacceptable. Waiting 3 weeks is just… what are you guys doing? That’s roughly 105 hours for you guys to work on this. >>>> There was a current refill available! BTW!! <<<< I was COMPLETELY patient with this for almost 2 full weeks but I have to care about myself, now. I don’t use this service as a charity to you guys. This isn’t charity. This is peoples’ mental health you’re yo-yoing around here. This isn’t a game. I’m not ordering a pizza or a TV or clothes this is medication I need right now to just function normally day to day. And if there is a serious issue with it… for some reason… I’d think having the patient take the fall for it is just bad practice? Right? I have to wait for an unspecified amount of time, slowly just getting worse, for you guys to refill a prescription that I already had a refill on. Why do patients suffer because you guys ran into some paperwork issues? If the prescriber isn’t responding to you guys, assign another one! Emergency refill to hold me over? Nope. No resolution, no compromise, no solutions, no answers, no nothing. Just discounts on a service you aren’t even providing. Discounts don’t fix this. There won’t be another month if you guys don’t provide the service! I did everything you guys asked. Was told, “oops, not sure, really weird, here’s 30% off next month. Just wait, we’re working on it. I’ll look into this. I’ll update you. Here’s 50% off. Etc, etc, etc.” I don’t care about the discounts I want the whole service I paid for and I wanted someone to CARE and DO something about it. Not just spout a script and tell me they’ll look into it. I already heard that! Nothing gets done and I’m not holding my breath.

hmmm. i don’t fully agree with my counselor’s approach. i was diagnosed with ADHD via an online assessment… ADHD is both the most over/misdiagnosed AND under diagnosed neural deficit. so i don’t think it is appropriate to fullllly rely on this game of 20 questions as the most accurate diagnosis. when meeting with the provided counselor, i should be getting further assessed and i should be answering QUESTIONS about MY experience and MY diagnosis. rather than being TOLD i am not “normal.” and trying to assign me an identity and compare it against a “normal” brain. i think some more appropriate terminology would be “neural typical” and “neural divergent” rather than straight up saying i am “not normal.” like you don’t even know annmnnything about my symptoms, my diagnosis, or if i’m inattentive or hyperactive and you never asked about my lifestyle, and what else i am doing to manage my ADHD. you should be ASKING me QUESTIONS to know about MY experience before you just TELL me what you think my experience is. also, of course you guys don’t want anyone to know this because you are paid to keep people medicated, but ADHD symptoms can totally be outgrown through extensive development and exercise of the frontal lobe done achieved through meditation, therapy, treatment, and lifestyle.

I'm rating Cerebral two stars based solely off the fact that the NP I had was nice, timely, and communicated well with me during our appointments. However, communication with Cerebral's support team is horrible. I had an appointment at the beginning of this month where my provider was continuing my prescription for a non-stimulant medication, and had to wait about a week to get prescriber issues resolved. Normally, that wouldn't be a huge deal. However, stopping an antidepressant cold turkey kind of sucks and I ended up feeling worse mentally than I did before I started cerebral for about a week while I adjusted to not taking my medication anymore. I'm currently in the process of cancelling my subscription because I'm switching to a different service that's a bit pricier but you get what you pay for. Also, I haven't even seen an actual counselor yet because they cancelled a week before the appointment, and then I had to change counselors because they left Cerebral, and then I had to reschedule. So it seems like they just expanded their company too quickly and didn't have the staffing to manage an influx of patients. I might come back in a few months to see if they've worked out their issues.