Alma vs Headway: Which is Better for Mental Health?

Mental Health America states that around 62 percent of mental health issues go undetected and untreated. The broken and incredibly expensive conventional mental and general healthcare is causing a lot of chaos, leading to an intense crisis in the country.

Online therapy and psychiatry platforms are breaking these barriers with tech-enabled, ground-breaking treatments and solutions.

I have been getting many requests asking me to compare Headway with Alma to help you decide which one is better for mental healthcare. So, I tried both platforms and put together this comprehensive article to answer all your burning questions.

About Alma

Alma is a mental healthcare platform based out of New York. It was founded in 2017 by Dr. Harry Ritter, an ex-employee at Oscar Health. Dr Harry Ritter is also the current CEO of the company.

Alma was established with the sole purpose of expanding the network of mental healthcare providers in the US and making them easily accessible as well as highly cost-effective for the general public.

Alma has a free on-site search directory that helps those struggling with mental disorders locate a provider who is a good fit for them in terms of availability, cost, and other criteria.

About Headway

Headway is a much older platform established in 2012 and headquartered in New York. It was founded to reduce the additional administrative burden caused by the processing of insurance plans for mental healthcare needs.

Andrew Adams is the founder and CEO of Headway. He states that the mission of the platform is to give patients with mental issues an opportunity to seek affordable solutions, online or offline, by helping them get connected with some of the best therapists and psychiatrists in the country.

Headway aims to fix the mental healthcare crisis in the US.

Alma vs Headway: Detailed Comparison

Let’s look at the detailed comparison provided below for a better understanding.

1. How Does it Work?

Alma

My experience of booking a therapist with Alma was butter-smooth. The platform is quite intuitively designed.

The search directory helped me to directly get connected with a counselor in my state. I simply had to choose my state of residence and the service I was looking for. And, voila, Alma came up with a list of around 155 providers for my zip code. My state is the District of Columbia.

Note – If you already know a provider, you can even search for their names directly.

Once I got the provider list along with their detailed profiles and availability, I had two options for booking the one I wanted. I could either sort the experts based on their availability and self-schedule an appointment on the spot, or another alternative was to submit a request to the concerned provider.

Moreover, the search filter is very well made, enabling me to add extra criteria to get a more drilled-down, specific list of providers based on multiple conditions such as

• The preferred language of communication
• Provider identity/gender
• Area of concern
• Insurance carrier
• The requirement for a special type of providers like psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, and more

Coming to the most impressive feature, a specialized 7-question questionnaire to match you with a particular provider is by far the most underrated free feature of Alma. You will be matched in 2 days.

This free short quiz is optional and even asks about your therapy approach preferences, such as integrative, psychodynamic, and cognitive & behavioral.

By this process, I got 15 providers accepting my insurance, Aetna, by this process, and it took me under 5 minutes. If you choose out-of-pocket payment, providers who fit your budget will be listed.

All of this is truly free, convenient, and available without signing up with Alma, which is great.

Headway

Headway is definitely not as inclusive as Alma. And it does not offer similar levels of diversity when it comes to mental healthcare services. But Headway is also a free search directory to find mental healthcare providers based on a number of parameters and requirements set using a multi-criteria filter.

The filter was pretty much the same as Alma’s filter, but Headway has a condition for its patients and that is every patient must have insurance to be eligible to consult providers on the platform.

The cost calculator on the website helped me gauge the approximate cost of my treatment based on the insurance plan I had. This works great for patients on a budget or to assess long-term treatment feasibility.

Headway offers online, in-person, and phone consultations. Phone session was an extra feature that did not exist on Alma. But other than this, the search filter’s sorting process is the same as Alma. I experienced no hiccups while booking appointments, but scheduling or billing errors may happen later, as per most customer complaints.

2. Pricing/Affordability

Both Alma and Headway work like provider search directories and do not have any control over individual treatment costs. The pricing will be determined by your provider based on the other criteria selected during the booking process.

You have the option to discuss per session cost and relevant payment details with your provider after the first appointment is scheduled.

Also, Headway is free for providers, whereas Alma charges a fee of $125 USD to start practicing on the platform.

3. Insurance Coverage

Alma

Alma accepted some of the top insurance providers and also gave me the option to use its services without insurance, unlike Headway.

Headway

Headway also accepts most insurance carriers in the US. However, it does not accept Medicare and Medicaid. Also, I was only eligible to use Headway’s services if I had insurance.

4. Accessibility

Alma

Alma is currently fully serviceable in the following states (20), with limited accessibility in other states.

• Arizona
• Delaware
• Connecticut
• California
• Florida
• Massachusetts
• Colorado
• Illinois
• Maryland
• District of Columbia
• Texas
• Oregon
• New Jersey
• Washington
• Nevada
• New York
• Virginia
• North Carolina
• Pennsylvania
• Georgia 

Headway

Headway services are available in the following states of America:

• Washington
• Texas
• California
• New York
• North Carolina
• Virginia
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Ohio
• Florida
• Tennessee
• Pennsylvania
• Arizona
• Connecticut
• Michigan
• New Jersey
• District of Columbia
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Minnesota
• Illinois
• Georgia
• Louisiana
• Colorado

There is good news though. Headway services are expanding rapidly and will soon be available in 27 more states.

5. Privacy

Alma

Alma’s privacy policy pretty much works the same as Headway. It is a HIPAA-compliant platform that collects patient information for improving the products, responding to law enforcement requests or court orders, surveys and analytics, sending marketing materials, authenticating users to prevent fraud, and more.

I do not see any potential dangers here, and Alma has definitely passed the privacy and security checkpoint.

Headway

Headway has a transparent privacy policy, and there is nothing objectionable. The platform collects patient information such as patient name, email address, postal address, IP address, phone number, purchase records, and more for improving the website, debugging, improving customer service, and data analytics.

6. Available Treatments

Alma

Alma, in my opinion, was more comprehensive when it came to providing services falling into different categories of mental healthcare. In other words, there are more extensive options for both patients and clinicians compared to Headway.

Alma specializes in addressing almost every mental health illness under the sun and caters to most age groups separately, not just individual adults.

What I like about Alma is that it even covers serious issues that can get quite complicated to treat, such as schizophrenia, psychosis, and suicide. Here is the complete list of issues the platform provides holistic solutions to:

• Individual mental therapy
• Counseling for couples
• Family Counseling
• Medication management services
• Therapy for children and adolescents
• Life Coaching and transitions
• Depression counseling
• Anxiety disorders
• Panic disorders
• Grief counseling
• Personal growth and self-esteem
• Reiki and acupuncture
• Nutritional counseling
• Eating disorders
• Body image issues
• Weight loss and management counseling
• Chronic illnesses, pain management
• Sleep disorders
• Yoga advice
• Relationship advice, sex and intimacy counseling, marriage issues
• General relationship challenges with friends or colleagues
• Parenting issues
• Autism spectrum disorders, pediatrics, ADD/ADHD
• Learning challenges and neuropsychological evaluation/testing
• LGBTQ issues, men’s issues, issues related to race and ethnicity
• Infertility and pre or post-pregnancy problems plus women’s issues
• OCD, personality disorders, bipolar disorder and PTSD
• Domestic violence
• Psychosis, schizophrenia, and suicidal tendencies

Headway

Headway is similar to Alma in many ways. But it is slightly more restrictive on the following fronts:

• Overall services available are less holistic and target specific mental issues on an individual basis, compared to Alma
• Options available for providers to effectively manage and expand their practice/professional expertise
• Community Outreach

Here is a list of disorders Headwaycan help with:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Bipolar Disorder
• ADD
• Grief and loss management
• ADHD
• Infertility issues
• Anger management
• OCD
• Post-pregnancy/maternal mental health problems
• Stress
• PTSD
• Eating disorders
• Women’s and men’s issues
• Relationship problems
• Substance abuse issues
• Trauma
• LGBTQ-related issues
• Sleeping disorder
• Family Issues

7. Pros and Cons of Alma

8. Pros and Cons of Headway

Conclusion

Considering the diversity and the extensive set of mental healthcare services offered by Alma, I would prefer it over Headway any day.

Alma even has an amazing reputation, and it is way better in terms of ratings and reviews on Trustpilot and other popular review platforms. Also, online word-of-mouth marketing triumphs for me, so my first choice would be Alma. It is a better mental healthcare system, without a doubt.