Choosing care
How we stack up.
The quick version
How we stack up, side by side
The big national brands all solve a real problem. They also come with tradeoffs. Here's the scan before the details.
| Feature | LiveWell | Hims & Hers | BetterHelp | Talkiatry | Done |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A real psych clinic, Oregon and Washington | A DTC pharmacy with a prescriber bolted on top | A therapy marketplace owned by Teladoc | Insurance psychiatry, run at scale | An ADHD subscription |
| How you get seen | A real 60-minute intake | A questionnaire somebody skims | Matched to whatever therapist is on the platform | A psychiatry eval inside a volume system | A quick eval, then a monthly script |
| Who you deal with | The same provider, who remembers you | A portal | Often a rotating therapist | A platform provider who might rotate out | Mostly async, mostly a refill |
| Meds and therapy | Both, and the meds support therapy | Meds only | Therapy only | Meds-focused | Stimulants, ADHD only |
| What they cover | Mental health and men's health | A short prescription list | Talk therapy | Psychiatry, mostly med-management | ADHD, and that's it |
| The catch | You still have to do your part | No real conversation, ever | Quality is a coin flip, and the privacy record is rough | Short follow-ups, provider turnover | Legal scrutiny, and a narrow lane |
We could sit here and tell you we're the only real option, that the big national clinics are all corner-cutting nightmares, that everyone else is selling pills out of the back of an app, and that you should just trust us because we said so. We're not going to do that, partly because it'd be a lie, and partly because anyone who reads it can tell it's a lie inside of about two paragraphs.
Hims, BetterHelp, Talkiatry, Done, they all do something real and they all have a catch, and we're not exempt from that either. We refer patients out to other places all the time. Sometimes a guy walks in who genuinely just wants a generic ED script delivered to his door and a five minute touch base every few months, and we'll tell him outright that he's probably better off with a DTC subscription than with us.
So here's the honest version. Four big names you've probably already seen ads for, what each one actually is under the marketing, what they're good at, what they're not good at, and where we fit on the same map. If you read it and one of them's the better call, go with that one. You already knew the biggest podcast budget doesn't mean the best care, and that's basically the whole point of this page.
Hims & Hers
Hims is a publicly traded direct-to-consumer pharmacy company with a prescriber layer attached to the top of it. You fill out a questionnaire, a clinician reviews it, the script gets written, and the medication ships to your house on a monthly subscription. Most of the interaction's asynchronous, meaning you're not actually on a call with anyone for the vast majority of visits. The whole model is built around the box on your doorstep, and nobody on their end actually knows you. Hims is also in active litigation with Novo Nordisk over its compounded semaglutide, and the FDA sent it a warning letter in 2025 over how it marketed those GLP-1 knockoffs.
Hims fits guys who already know what's going on and just want a basic generic script with as little friction as possible. That crowd's probably better off with Hims than with us, and we'll say so.
What it does well
- Transparent pricingThe cost's upfront in a way most of healthcare refuses to be, and generic ED meds and finasteride cost less than an in-person copay used to cost.
- Clean experienceThe interface is easy, the basic anxiety and depression prescribing isn't crazy on its face, and if you know what you want it just works.
The catch
- A questionnaire has a ceilingNo real conversation.
No nuanced history-taking.
No way to catch the thing you'd have caught in person, because the model's built around speed and scale. - You message a portalIf something goes sideways with your meds, you're not calling your prescriber, and the GLP-1 and ADHD-adjacent stuff has gotten them in trouble more than once.
What it does well
- AccessThe sheer number of therapists means you can usually find someone available within days, evenings and weekends included, which the brick and mortar world's been failing at for decades.
- A low front doorFor someone who put off therapy because of phone tag and a six week wait, BetterHelp removes that friction almost completely, and a lot of guys try therapy for the first time through it because getting in the door is real, even if who you get is basically a coin flip.
The catch
- Variable qualityThe only thing the platform verifies is a license, so you might get a sharp clinician with years of CBT training or someone fresh out of school burning through cases, and there's no way to know which until you're already in it.
- Privacy track recordThe 2023 FTC settlement over sharing user health data with advertisers like Facebook and Snapchat was a real problem, not a minor PR hiccup.
BetterHelp
BetterHelp is a therapy marketplace owned by Teladoc, not a medical clinic. You fill out an intake, they match you to a licensed therapist on the platform, and you do sessions over video, voice, or chat on a weekly subscription. They don't prescribe medication and they don't employ psychiatrists, it's a therapy marketplace running on subscription logic, not a medical clinic.
The platform also leans heavily on chat-based work that the research is much less convinced about than the marketing implies, and the sponsorship model that funded all those podcast ad reads bought a lot of coverage that looked the other way on both. They also paid a $7.8 million FTC settlement in 2023 and got banned from doing it again, after the FTC found they fed users' email addresses and mental-health questionnaire answers to Facebook, Snapchat, and ad networks. BetterHelp fits someone who needs a place to talk, knows medication isn't the question, is willing to swap therapists a few times to find one that clicks, and has thought through the privacy tradeoff with their eyes open. If you need meds, need an actual psych eval, or don't want your mental health questionnaire answers fed to Facebook's ad engine, BetterHelp's not it.
Talkiatry
Talkiatry is an insurance-based telehealth psychiatry company. They take a wide range of commercial insurance, which is real value in a system where finding covered psychiatric care can take months. But it's still a national telehealth model built around scale. The visit may be with a physician or another psychiatric prescriber, but the structure is still intake, medication management, short follow-ups, big panels, and provider turnover risk. They aren't the villain. They also aren't a small clinic where one clinician has time to hold the whole picture. Their billing record is not spotless either. Truth in Advertising flagged their "most visits cost $30 or less" marketing against consumer complaints about surprise bills that ran into the hundreds, sometimes near a thousand dollars, and the company later dropped that pricing claim from its site.
Talkiatry fits someone whose main requirement is getting psychiatric medication care through insurance and who can tolerate a more standardized system to get that. If you want a real intake, one clinician who remembers the full story, men's health and psych in the same room, and follow-ups that can be short or long depending on what you actually need, that's where we're different.
What it does well
- Insurance-based psychiatry accessThey can get many patients into covered psychiatric medication care. That's useful. It isn't the same thing as small-panel continuity.
- Access at scaleScheduling can be faster than the old waitlist model, but the scale that makes access possible is also what makes the care feel standardized.
The catch
- The volume modelFollow-ups are short, often around twenty to thirty minutes, and panel sizes per provider are large because the unit economics demand it.
- TurnoverThe provider you started with might not be the one you have a year in, and rebuilding that relationship from scratch takes a real toll on continuity.
What it does well
- Fast accessA service that actually gets you in this week instead of handing you a three month waitlist is doing something real, even if the rest of the model is a mess.
- For the long-overlookedReal ADHD goes undertreated in plenty of adult guys, sometimes a decade or more, and if that's you, getting seen fast actually matters.
The catch
- A legal cloudDone's prescribing practices drew a federal prosecution, and in November 2025 its founder and clinical president were convicted on drug distribution and health care fraud charges.
- Narrow scopeMostly stimulants, mostly ADHD. If what's going on is ADHD plus depression plus a sleep problem plus more, the model isn't built to see all of it at once.
Done
Done is an ADHD-focused subscription telepsych service. You sign up, get an evaluation, and if you're diagnosed you start a monthly subscription for ongoing prescribing, mostly stimulants. They've built the whole product around speed of access, on the bet that the existing system's so broken for ADHD that people'll pay a flat fee just to skip the waitlist and the bureaucracy.
The whole "ADHD pill mill" perception didn't come from nowhere. Their founder and clinical president were federally convicted in a roughly $100 million case the DOJ said moved over 40 million Adderall and stimulant pills, plus health care fraud. Done fits a pretty narrow situation: clean ADHD presentation, no real co-occurring stuff, you've done the homework on the company and made peace with the legal history, and you want one specific thing fast. If your situation's more layered than that, or if the legal back and forth's a dealbreaker for you, it's not the move.
Where we sit
Where the volume model breaks
We're LiveWell Psychiatry and Men's Health, a small clinic serving Oregon and Washington, in person and over telehealth. Initial evaluations run sixty minutes because that's where the map gets built. Follow-ups can be fifteen, thirty, forty-five, or sixty minutes depending on what we're actually doing that day. Sometimes fifteen is exactly right. The difference is that the visit length is a clinical choice, not the only slot the business model allows. We take most of the major insurance plans, and cash if you'd rather. The panel stays small enough that the clinician actually remembers who you are. Psych, basic men's health hormone work, and IV wellness all sit in one place.
The volume model
Not a one-slot mill
The problem is not a fifteen-minute visit. Sometimes that's enough. The problem is when every visit is forced into the same short slot, the panel is too big for anyone to know who you are, and the system keeps swapping the clinician who is supposed to understand the story.
How we do it
Long enough to be a conversation
Forty-five to sixty minute evaluations, thirty minute follow-ups, the same clinician visit after visit so the longitudinal context's real, and scope broad enough to cover a tangled situation instead of just the one thing that's easiest to bill for.
Where we beat all four
Depth and continuity
Hims skips the real evaluation. BetterHelp won't touch your meds.
Talkiatry keeps the visits short and the panel big. Done only sees one slice of you.
We do the whole picture with one clinician who actually remembers it.
Where we lose, plainly
A real visit costs more than a cheap DTC subscription even on insurance, we only serve Oregon and Washington, the wait can stretch a few weeks when it's busy, and there's no app or chatbot intake, so if any of those are your deciding factors a national chain fits you better.
If the national chain fits you better, go with it. We're not going to chase you.
If fast and DTC and a script in the mail is the whole ask, Hims wins and we'll say so. If you want the same clinician every time who actually remembers how you got here and can see the whole tangled picture at once, that's us, Oregon and Washington only.
If we're actually the fit
If you want to talk it through, reach out. If one of the national options is the better call for your situation, we'll tell you that.
Sources
- Hims FDA warning letter on compounded semaglutide marketing, Sept. 9, 2025: www.fda.gov
- BetterHelp $7.8M FTC privacy settlement, 2023: www.ftc.gov
- Done founder and clinical president convicted in $100M Adderall distribution and health care fraud case, DOJ, Nov. 19, 2025: www.justice.gov
- Talkiatry pricing claim and customer-review discussion, Truth in Advertising: truthinadvertising.org