Ever since US-owned therapy platform BetterHelp appeared in the UK it has been a huge advertiser. While the company’s global advertising and marketing spend in 2025 was US$518.5 million, in the UK it initially focused on podcasts such as The Rest is History and others. Recently it has turned to advertising on the London Underground, arousing controversy in some quarters.

One ad has had a particularly negative reception from therapy professionals. It reads "Switching a therapist should be as easy as switching trains”. Welldoing has been told that a group of professionals is currently compiling a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority and Transport for London who state “advertisements must not cause pressure, distress or contain content that is socially irresponsible particularly when dealing with health or vulnerable groups”.

I spoke to several therapists about these BetterHelps ads, and the ideas they promote about therapy.

Wendy Bristow is a psychotherapist in North London, and she told me this ad “really got my goat. I believe it is unethical.”

I asked her to explain how it broached standards around therapy. “Whenever researchers investigate which type/modality of therapy is most effective, the result is always that the element which determines the effectiveness of the therapy is the relationship with the therapist. Obviously it’s a good idea, at the beginning, to try a few people to find the right therapist that you feel comfortable with. But many, many people come to therapy because of relationship difficulties and if they are encouraged to think that swapping therapists is a good and necessary thing, done as easily as changing trains, then their work is never going to get to the heart of those difficulties unless they stick with someone where those very difficulties will emerge, and work that through, as Freud put it.”

She continued, “Many people come to therapy because they can’t seem to maintain relationships - either they repeatedly end them, or the other person always dumps or cheats on them. Let’s say someone is on BetterHelp because they’re terrified of intimacy, maybe not consciously but because of painful things happening in the past, they might well want to ’swap therapists’ the minute that person starts to get to know them.”

It is this avoidance of connection, says Bristow, that means for many therapists, their training recommends that if a client wants to end, “we spend at least four weeks exploring that and acknowledging the ending. Which is very different to switching trains.”

Mark Vernon, a psychodynamic psychotherapist and author in London, explained it this way: “The only time we have someone constantly at our beck and call is when we are very young infants. Part of the task of life is realising that someone isn’t always available to us but we can draw from our own resources to be with others.

“So a form of therapy that promises you can just move from one to the other risks sending you on an infantilising journey seeking the perfect person. A childish fantasy of a lost dreamy time."

He also called into question the way the ad focuses on removing friction.”We’re at risk of making everything more and more frictionless — of course there are relationships that don’t work, and there should be accountability. But the first pitch of this ad is an invitation to regression.”

Another unnamed therapist told me that many of the things that BetterHelp has done are unethical, and this particular ad didn’t seem any more transgressive than others.

Looking back to the last time I wrote about BetterHelp in 2023, I want to add in the words of therapist and former editor of Therapy Today, Sally Brown. ”Ethical, clinically-driven online therapy platforms can be a win-win for practitioners and clients, offering a hassle-free way for therapists to reach new clients and get paid, while also removing many of the barriers that stop clients accessing help when they need it. But I think the question we are now asking is whether any platform can scale up to the extent of BetterHelp and still ensure minimum standards of clinical care.”

BetterHelp has surpassed 5 million people across over 100 countries worldwide who have used its therapy services. The platform currently has around 400,000 paying users.

Welldoing is a therapist-matching platform, founded in 2014. Featuring only verified therapists, we make it easier to find the best therapist for your needs.