In Search of a Marriage Tune-Up, We Turned to Amwell Couples Therapy

My husband and I have been married for 15 years and together for 20. Like many couples, we tend to have the same arguments over and over, but we’ve also gone through some major things over the past few years: a pandemic, a child in treatment for leukemia, and all of our family moving nearby, to name a few. As the dust settles from much of that, we have plenty to work through. We agreed that a marriage tune-up would be a good idea.

We’ve been to therapy together before and, while he was reluctant initially, he grew to enjoy the experience and saw how just a few sessions helped our relationship. I’m grateful he is as open as I am to working on our marriage. However, we have small children now, so it’s not always easy to leave home. Plus, as the owner of a real estate company, my husband is exceptionally busy. So we decided to test out virtual couples therapy.

In my research, Amwell came up as one of the top services to try. The cost is reasonable, it takes insurance, and the service is quite popular. And because it’s not a subscription service and you pay per session, online couples therapy through Amwell seemed like a nice, low-commitment way to get some perspective on our relationship.

I’ve tried virtual therapy once before through another service and didn’t have much success (the therapist was a no-show). I was hopeful our Amwell experience would go better. Unfortunately, there were many hurdles and bumps navigating Amwell’s website and sign-up process before we could see a therapist. Because of this, I was only able to book one session in the month I had to try the service. While the session itself went well, we would be reluctant to use the service again—here’s why.

How I Signed Up for Amwell

Amwell is a full-service telehealth platform offering both medical and mental health care online, including talk therapy and psychiatry services. I found the sign-up process for Amwell challenging. There’s no obvious place to create an account, and once you click “see a doctor” you are taken to another page to enter your insurance information and ZIP code.

From there, Amwell pulls up options based on your location. But I was determined to dig deeper.

I contacted support via email and, while responsive and kind, they were just as stumped as I was as to why no options were showing up for me and they weren’t able to help me. I was prepared to pay out-of-pocket for the session; I just needed to get in first to see my options to book one, and there was no clear way to do this. So, I tried selecting a random insurance company from the dropdown to see if I could see options that way and sort of back-door my way into Amwell’s system to search behavioral health providers—and it worked! I was able to view providers and get started making my appointment.

Although I was glad I finally had success, this was not a great start. If you’re already struggling, getting help should be simple and easy. All of the red tape was frustrating and confusing, and I know that had my husband been sitting next to me, he would have thrown up his hands and tried to convince me to forget the whole thing.

Pricing

Ultimately, I had to pay out-of-pocket, but there was no subscription option required (or available) and the pay-per-session therapy rates were reasonable—$109. I wanted to feel like I could walk away and never come back if I had a bad experience, and I found that to be true.

Amwell does take many of the big insurance companies, such as Aetna, Humana, UnitedHealthcare, and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Sometimes it’s possible to have one party in the couple named as the “covered” party, so long as they have a diagnosable mental health condition with a code that can be entered for billing purposes. It’s always best to check with your insurance company or therapist before attempting to utilize coverage for couples therapy.

Therapist Qualifications

Once I got into Amwell’s platform as a user, I found a clean, easy-to-navigate portal page to select a service. There were two search filters available: by date or by provider. This was disappointing to me because there was no way to search by degree or specialty. When searching for a provider, the results don’t show qualifications upfront; they simply all say “Therapist” underneath the names. In order to view qualifications, you have to click on the providers’ profiles and read their bios. I chose “Behavioral Health” and then “Therapy,” which brought up a disappointingly short list of provider options based on my location.

Another issue I encountered is that Amwell doesn’t have a filter to search for couples therapy. After contacting support, I was advised to look at each provider’s profile individually and see if “couples” was listed in their bio. This was time-consuming, and most profiles were vague (for example, “relationships” was listed but not “couples therapy” specifically). It was frustrating having to do all of this when there could simply be a “couples therapy” search filter.

I decided to use the message feature to ask providers directly if they work with couples. The first two messages went through, but after that, every time I tried to reach out to a new therapist, I got an error message saying that I “did not have authorization to send this message” with no further explanation. So, I contacted support via email again, and a rep called me on the phone the next day. She explained that a user cannot message a therapist until they’ve already had an appointment with that therapist. And as for those first two for whom the messages went through? She said it was a “glitch in the system.”

In all my years of dealing with an array of customer service departments, customer service has never called me. That is some solid initiative, and I appreciated it because I honestly almost gave up. (I think my husband was sort of hoping I would, so it drove my persistence even further, of course.)

The rep also confirmed that you cannot search for couples therapy, but that she would search for me and call back. She never did, but I’m impressed that I got a call at all.

After more poking around the portal, I discovered that if I booked an appointment, then tried messaging that provider, the message would go through. Again, time-consuming, but at least I was not charged for any of these appointments, since you can cancel without a fee within 24 hours. For the two therapists where the message initially worked, one of them responded and said he works with couples and could see us, so I found an open time slot and booked it. Hallelujah.

How Therapy Sessions Work at Amwell

Therapy sessions through Amwell are done via video chat. We were sent an email the day before our scheduled session that noted: “You have a therapy appointment tomorrow. We will send you a text message to confirm your visit. When it’s time for your appointment, make sure you’re in a quiet, private setting where you are comfortable. We look forward to seeing you!” This was followed by a short list of reminders about no-shows/cancellations.

Shortly before the session was scheduled to start, we were sent a text reminder as well as an email with a link to our appointment.  This link brought us to a virtual waiting room. We waited five minutes for the therapist to join, and in that time, a chat-style intake form popped up asking questions geared toward assessing if we were depressed or in crisis and needing urgent in-person mental health assistance.

We waited a few moments before it happened again: a brief flash of our therapist, then a black screen and a spinning icon. This was awkward and frustrating. We switched web browsers, from Safari to Chrome, and then secured a connection. The troubleshooting took seven minutes away from our session. Unlike at some other telehealth platforms, Amwell did not tell us which browser to use ahead of time or allow us to log in early to test out our tech.

Our provider apologized, saying this issue had been happening to him all day. He shared upfront that sessions are 40 to 45 minutes long, but ours would be shorter due to our technical troubles. This didn’t seem fair since it wasn’t our fault, but at this point, it was what it was.

While he didn’t have too many helpful suggestions to offer, he did recommend two books to us before time ran out. That was fine, but what we really needed were useful suggestions we could implement—like how to communicate better at the moment before things get heated—which we didn’t receive. He also didn’t offer any recommendations on calming techniques to de-escalate when things get intense, or how to approach these common triggers from a different angle. I do think that these things could come in subsequent sessions, however; in retrospect, the first appointments are usually more about sharing info and allowing the therapist to get to know you better. So maybe my expectations for tools right off the bat were a bit high.

When we asked about booking another session, our therapist said he controls the schedule on his end and doesn’t open time slots far in advance. He told me that he could open appointments up based on what we would like to book and that now that we’d had a session with him, we could message him to ask, and he would then “open up” an appointment slot for me to grab and book. I noticed when searching that many providers seem to have lots of availability while others may operate like ours, only opening slots to fill needs. Again, not very user-friendly. Plus, the difficulties in landing this appointment had turned us off from the idea of booking another one.

Pros and Cons

I found several positive and negative aspects during my experience with Amwell.

Final Thoughts

Overall, we found our Amwell couples therapy experience more frustrating than helpful. My husband felt good after the appointment since we got to unload some thoughts and issues we’d been hanging on to. Still, the technical hoops we had to jump through and the connection issues were disappointing. I also expected more provider options: the “wide range” of therapists the site boasts was not reflected in my experience, nor was the digital technology it highlights. Had I not been so determined, I would have given up much sooner. I also hoped for easier searchability and an extended session to make up for the minutes we lost.

While our therapist was warm and caring, the experience didn’t give us what we were looking for, which was a calm and helpful session that would leave us eager to book again. I think in the future we will find a local therapist to visit in person because we also realized through this experience that we prefer it this way—especially since it means our kids won’t be potentially banging on the door, as it is when we try to do this from home.

In addition, more people reported using the service to access couples therapy than most other large telehealth providers whose users we surveyed. I do think that had I not had such difficulty in the setup and booking of our appointment, I may have come away from the experience with a more positive outlook since our therapist seemed fine.

And, call me old-fashioned, but I do think that there is something to be said for in-person connection, especially when it comes to something as nuanced and intimate as couples therapy.