“I'm grateful for a convenient and relatively affordable way to have gotten started on a prescription for my depression. In the past, the start-up costs of frequent office visit co-pays plus the prescription co-pay have been too expensive. Unfortunately, I have had a couple of issues with the medication shipping on time. They were able to resolve it by sending it to a local pharmacy, but that still caused unnecessary stress.”
“I am glad I can get my medication for less than it would cost to pay an in person therapist out of pocket, but $95/mo seems pretty expensive for very little interaction with the doctor.”
“Hi,
Dr. Figg has really tried to help me but the meds are making me worse, not better. I am also now gaining weight, and I eat very little. This makes me more depressed. Please take me off Brightside. It just isn’t working for me though I think your service is amazing and I am sure it works for most people.
Thank you,
Zubet”
“I think it's great in concept with some room for improvement. Your service seems to predominately focus on depression/anxiety and not much room for anything else. My main issue is dealing with my ADHD, which most of the drugs aren't available through your service. Additionally all of the questionnaires are hyper focused on depression and anxiety and it skews the results as when I'm answering these questions, I'm answering in relation to my ADHD and the results think I'm extra depressed or anxious because I'm fidgety or irritable when those are simply symptoms of ADHD. I wish your service could expand its scope to be more inclusive of other mental disorders beyond depression and anxiety.”
“While quick access to medication is great, and my doctor is very helpful and accessible, the CBT lessons are sort of useless without accountability. I've also been paying for my medication through my insurance, and have never actually gotten meds shipped. I guess I thought the service would actually connect me with a therapist as well, but that's not the case. I'll be unsubscribing this month after I see a local physician.”
“I feel better. The medicine I was prescribed works great. The website still needs some work. I am unable to view messages from my provider and I am unable to send messages or questions during the process that isn't involving "check ins". Its a lot of money a month and I thought I'd have more access to my doctor. All in all, I feel less depressed and I'm getting my life back. The extra stuff is just extra”
“It is very impersonable and hard... I like my doctor but I’ve had no change in how I feel, and am feeling pretty sad. Wish there was a way to redo your check ins too it seems like once you put it through it won’t let you change it. Like the anxiety tab hasn’t let me redo that in weeks. Overall I like it in that at least it’s better than nothing.”
“Not the most open communication with doctor somewhat predetermined algorithm for meds you might not want. Easy to start medication without having to schedule psych appointments months in advance. Great friendly doctor seems to genuinely care about my mental well being. I'm not sure I'm at a point of trust with technology that I want to let algorithms decide what meds I need instead of the doctor talking to me about what I believe might be best. First prescription took a fairly long time to receive but the refills are early and easy, even though they all come in separate packages on different days.
Also-when I get a check up email survey there's an animation of a graph that's going downwards. I would feel that I'm trying to work my way up from the low point of my depression and not vise versa. Would make a lot more sense to reverse the animation direction”
Thanks for your feedback, Dmytro. We take it seriously and are committed to everyone having a great experience on Brightside. Just to clarify, our algorithm evaluates your information relative to evidence and makes a suggestion to the doctor as to what medication is likely to work best for you. Your doctor than considers that along with other things they may learn about you in your consultation, to determine your treatment plan. The doctor is still the expert here, but the algorithm helps them understand what the evidence suggests.
When we treat depression and anxiety, we're really looking at reducing elevated symptoms associated with these conditions. The standard measures generally go up from 0 for low symptoms to 21 (anxiety) or 27 (depression) for high symptoms. So, in this case going down means reducing symptoms and making positive progress. We'll check in and make sure that's clear in the email.
Best wishes on your path and please let us know if there is anything else we can do to be helpful.
