Hi all,

Our mod team was recently approached by BetterHelp, an online subscription-based therapy provider, to do an AMA within our subreddit by a licensed therapist that specializes in child loss, perinatal mental health, and anxiety. They are willing to provide credentials to our mod team to verify the individual responding to questions, but our team has reached a moral impasse that we need the community to weigh in on.

Up until now, our team has had a blanket rule to not allow any companies, researchers, institutions, or anyone else with private interests to post within our community because our space is filled with so many vulnerable humans going through extremely difficult situations. The fertility space, in general, is ripe with opportunity for those that might take advantage of this vulnerability, much less a space like ours. That said, the message they sent was clearly written very thoughtfully, and the provider they’re willing to assign to the AMA would be willing to answer people’s questions about their worries, maybe provide healthy coping mechanisms, and describe the subspecialties of therapy that could be most beneficial to the people here.

IF we allow this AMA, it needs to be with the majority support of our community, so we are opening a poll for feedback. Other than voting in the poll, upvoting this post and providing even a short comment with your thoughts/concerns/ideas would help boost the visibility of this announcement to the maximum amount of sub members.

Of course, the major issue for us as a mod team is that we are NOT endorsing BetterHelp as a specific company or resource. For folks that are in areas where they aren’t able to find an in person provider, online therapy through any number of companies may be helpful. We are not partnering with them and the language in the AMA will be very clear about that. We will also be making sure that the provider answering questions in the AMA does not promote the BetterHelp brand.

If you’ve read this long, thanks for bearing with us. We appreciate how the people of this community come together to support one another and are grateful to help moderate.

Would you be interested in and supportive of an AMA provided by a therapist from BetterHelp, with the limitations outlined above?