CerebralReviews of cerebral.com

Been thrown around way too much to multiple prescribers for one reason or another. Even giving me last minute notice so I had to go without medication because they kept rescheduling me. This has gone on pretty much ever since and I’ve been on the fence of just opting out of the whole thing. It’s insensitive to the patients. Especially ones that already struggle opening up. As soon as I feel comfortable with one, they change it up causing me even more anxiety. Hurt and disappointed.

My negative comments are specifically targeted towards Lori Dye. Some support staff are helpful (like Olivia Nguyen). But some have no idea what they are talking about. It's probably why I had to reach out about a dozen times to get clarity. The company itself had no concern about how confusing their systems have been for the customers or customers who want to be customers. I had been a customer from February to June 1st. At one point I thought this was a good option and I asked my husband to look into it. But he couldn't sign up as a new customer because the cerebral app doesn't work and sometimes the browser doesn't work. There were months at a time where nobody knew how to tell me that cerebral was switching payment programs and therefore would no longer accept my HSA payments like they originally had. Then the company deactivated my account with no warning. There are serious ethical concerns I have as a recent customer who no longer wants to do any business with cerebral. They abandoned a client and have no organization whatsoever and it's extremely dangerous for people who are trying to seek help. Update: I spent months trying to pay this company, and they time and time again told me they were figuring out their new payment system. They eventually (after months) said they were going to offer me an invoice, but I had to email the whole team again in order to actually get them. I also tried to resolve this all from Tuesday through Thursday this last week when they without warning completely deactivated my account, and they said the only way they would be able to resolve it is if I paid another monthly fee. The company isn't able to prescribe controlled medicines because of some shady business they have going on. So, they're not able to offer some customers what they need anyways. They had told customers that they were going to provide a referral to local places, but again they weren't going to do the work. They tell you to find the prescriber. I have no interest in moving forward with this company and I suggest you stay away from them as well. They are in the middle of a lot of legal battles right now and can't even be honest with their customers about that either.

I have a medication and Cerebral has been zero help in getting a refill.

First of all, I have an MA in Clinical Mental Health and have also lived with a mental illness for over 15 years. I know what I am talking about and am not some red-flag patient or drug-seeker who complains about everything. At first I thought Cerebral would be an a godsend after years of PAs and CRNPs running through different combinations of the same meds unsuccessfully for TRD in a large health system that had tons of red tape and overwhelmed providers with poor training who frequently quit. I had high hopes after my initial meetings with Cerebral. Now, about 6 months in, I am so fed up that I needed to post a review, because Cerebral makes good provision of care IMPOSSIBLE. I got set up with an awesome provider on the other side of the country who has been totally revamping my med regimen. She's wonderful and an MD, and the only reason I now stay. That's where the good ends. You get NO ACCESS TO RECORDS at all, not even when your last appointment was or visit summaries. If you need something like paperwork, rescheduling, testing, work letters, etc you HAVE to go through Cerebral's people- and you will get no responses for days or weeks, if you EVER get a response at all. For example, my provider repeatedly requested ADHD testing; they never sent it (in hindsight, probably because they no longer allow prescribing of most ADHD meds and didn't want to lose a customer by getting a diagnosis.) We later had to request a medical letter for work b/c of severe discontinuation syndrome while weaning off a long-time SNRI. It took several weeks and multiple contacts from my doc for them to send me the letter. (When they did send it, it had huge Cerebral letterhead with "Psychiatry Department" in big letters, so I couldn't even use it- I didn't want to get fired, but I also didn't want to be stigmatized at my job when the office manager was my direct supervisor. I ended up quitting my job instead.) My provider had to give me her personal cell phone early on, because whenever we needed something it would take so long (and sometimes never happen at all, despite multiple requests.) My "Care Counselor" changed multiple times and finally I just stopped even trying (I can't imagine how bad trying to get full therapy is). They were useless anyway; just gave you pre-packaged advice you could get from Google. And finally, they recently "updated" a bunch of policies regarding 1) what meds can be prescribed and 2) how clients will be charged and for what. I fought for a week to get a cancellation fee taken off when I accidentally clicked on an appointment for the wrong month and it was only two hours away (ie, meant to hit June 20th at 2pm, accidentally tapped on May 20th at 2pm, and it was currently May 20th at 12pm.) I cancelled it immediately after making it when I realized my mistake- literally two minutes later- and they still charged me $29 and would NOT take it off, even after I escalated the complaint. Oh, and if you try to complain or get an issue resolved, however cordially, they will send you bot-generated policy quotes repeatedly without even reading your email. (They sent me the same automated copy-paste email reply 3 times that did not address my actual issue, proving they had not read the email- OOPS, fake customer service exposed!) Also, your provider will be very limited in what they can do for you. I am being weaned off of a long-time antidepressant and am experiencing debilitating discontinuation syndrome. My doctor flat out told me that what I really need is temporary benzos, but she can't prescribe them because of Cerebral's new rules. I've never had an addiction or misused meds or even been on benzos before, but I can't have them because of a blanket policy. So as soon as I get stable again on the new meds, I am OUT, because even the best provider is made useless by Cerebral's overbearing policies. Your doctor will not be able to treat you the way they should; Cerebral will bill you for an accidental tap of the finger even when no one's time was used, no one lost an appointment slot, no one even knew any appointment had been made, and said appointment only existed for about 30 seconds! They will not give you paperwork you need, and if you try to complain about any of it, they will have a bot with a fake human name quote policy at your repeatedly without even reading your email before finally saying "you agreed to be charged the cancellation fee when you canceled" (I had to, or I couldn't cancel it.) In summary, Cerebral: 1) Gets you in the door with great providers. 2) Cripples those providers and does not allow them to provide the best care. 3.) Does not provide any customer service or record-keeping, 4.) Tries to fake you out and make you go away by using bot generated customer service emails. 5.) Uses policy as an excuse for nickel-and-diming you instead of common sense.

This company is a joke. Not the providers and counselors, they were lovely and very helpful. The customer service is absolutely abhorrent. I’ve been trying to reach someone who can answer my questions for two months, no one can help, when I do speak with someone they have zero ability/authority to help me. I asked to speak with someone higher up when the CS associate said they couldn’t help and was informed anyone above their level doesn’t have a direct line. They have to message them and they only responded to customer service. My emails and calls were left unanswered and if answered, I got blowoff responses. They claimed they couldn’t run my card to process payment in the app because sometimes it acts up. I called to pay and they can’t accept a payment over the phone. No one helped. I then cancelled my account and guess what… they were magically able to charge my card through the app! Because of this, I didn’t the medication on my plan and no one even bothered to discuss this with me. This company should be out out of business. A mental health app? Nope. Just a great cause of anxiety.

So Issue #1: I was told that I would get an appointment explicitly with a prescriber. I was asked to choose options from a list of meds that included included Adderall. Then l was charged a fee up front and after that I was told (at the start of my appointment) that it was against policy to fill Adderall. Not a single flag or warning whatsoever when I chose Adderall from a list of meds. This is unethical and deceptive at best. THEN the real problems began. In order to get my subscription canceled I could not do so anywhere on my account online... I had to search before finding out I had to email asking specifically. Then I get an email saying I had to fill something out (yet another road block) and then get a message saying it would be several days. A week later nothing has been processed and I was still listed as due to be charged $325 in June for a continued subscription. So... here I am having filled it out again and sent more letters forwarding and documenting the details for my bank. Very likely if I don't hear from them I will have to cancel my credit cards to prevent the charge and get new ones over this mess. So yeah... deceptive, unethical business tactics followed by what is looking to be outright fraud.

Our son very badly needed help and finding in-person therapy was not working well. We saw ads for Cerebral and thought that we'd give it a try. Now over $500 out with zero services received, we wish that we had investigated more carefully before having him go down this path. By the looks of reviews on this and other sites, our experience is not unique. Please stay away, unless you want to hand over your credit card to a company who will happily and persistently bill you while offering nothing in return, and then put up roadblocks to inhibit your ability to cancel. Our experience was very similar to one recently related in a viral TikTok. Our son input our credit card information before he was able to see available providers and their schedules. Like other reviewers have shared, he was shown only two options with extremely limited availability that was incompatible with his schedule. At that point, desperate for some help, he decided that this was not the avenue to pursue, so he didn't go any further through the process. Unfortunately, our son didn't read the fine print. (Who reads the fine print when, because of traumatic depression and anxiety, they are grasping for a lifeline?) The fine print essentially says that once the company has your payment information, you are enrolled. Moreover, they will charge you whether or not you utilize any of their services. Thankfully our son got help elsewhere and is doing much better now. Distracted by the all-consuming task of helping our son get healthy, it didn't occur to us to look carefully at our credit card statements to see whether there were charges from Cerebral. The company does not direct the user to a confirmation page at the culmination of signup. Nor do they send you a confirmation email. The only way to get to a receipt is to log in to their system and hunt it down via their menus. Thus, we had been charged for two months before we realized that he was still subscribed and paying for their "services." At that point we had our son initiate the cancellation process. Their website instructs as follows, "Please email ... with your request for cancellation by 9am PT one business day before your scheduled billing date to cancel your account. Our team will send a cancellation form for you to initiate the request." Our son emailed in the evening three business days prior to our scheduled billing date. They responded the following day with the cancellation form, which he promptly returned. Thus, the entire cancellation process (let alone the email) as described by their website was completed prior to 9am one business day before our billing date. The following Monday our son received an email confirming the cancellation. Thus, we assumed (how slowly we learn!) that we would not be charged for the third, or future, months. I then looked at our credit card statement for the month, and sure enough, there was the charge for the third month. Thus, not only do they make you give your payment information before you even know if their services will be as readily available to you as they advertise (many find that they are not), they are content with charging you for services that you don't use. Moreover, they make cancellation an unnecessarily onerous, multi-step process. However, the coup de grace is that even when you do succeed in "cancelling" their services before their stated cutoff, they charge you anyway. Thankfully, my credit card dispute team waived the charge for the month of services that post-date our cancellation. Now that Cerebral knows that we will dispute any further charges, I doubt that they will continue to try to charge us. But, you can believe that we'll be checking our statements carefully to be sure! They have given us zero evidence that we should trust them. This is shamefully predatory behavior. Predatory business practices should be shameful in any context. At the height of the pandemic-exacerbated mental health crisis, taking advantage of those reaching out in desperate anguish is evil. Beware!

Cerebral is con artist trash. Research how they are being sued and how frustrating it is to cancel an account. I was suffering from insomnia and they assumed I was stressed out. I didn't have anxiety at all, I figured out my insomnia issues on my own. All Cerebral offered me were pills and no real solutions to my insomnia. I refused to take any of the pills they offered and my psychologist was rude to me because I didn't take them. He said, "pills are all I have to offer to you". After my disappointing experience, I immediately wanted to cancel my account but there are no options to cancel on their website or their app. I had to google how to cancel the account. After I emailed to cancel my account, they contacted me back and said sorry to see you go. 2 days later they charged my account again and my account is still active. Now I'm contacting my credit card and disputing every charge. Because they are refusing to refund me my money and cancel my account. Do not support this company. Do not become another victim of their scam services. They are trash.