Behavioral Health

Lyra Health, Big Health and Mantra Health raise a combined $332M to commercialize digital therapeutics for mental/ behavioral health

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Lyra Health scores $235M and buys employ­ee assis­tant pro­gram ICAS World (Mobi­Health News):

Employ­er-focused dig­i­tal men­tal health provider Lyra Health announced a whop­ping $235 mil­lion Series F round led by Drag­oneer. Sales­force Ven­tures and Coat­ue also par­tic­i­pat­ed. This new infu­sion of cash brings the com­pa­ny’s total raise to over $900 million.

The fund­ing coin­cid­ed with the news that Lyra Health is acquir­ing employ­ee-assis­tant pro­gram ICAS World for an undis­closed sum. ICAS was found­ed in 1987 and pro­vides coach­ing and coun­sel­ing ser­vices to employ­ees. The ser­vice offers phone, face-to-face or web-based treat­ment. [Read more…] about Lyra Health, Big Health and Mantra Health raise a com­bined $332M to com­mer­cial­ize dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics for mental/ behav­ioral health

Solera Health includes Ginger and eMindful to expand digital mental healthcare platform

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Sol­era expands men­tal health net­work with new part­ners Gin­ger and eMind­ful (Fierce Healthcare):

Sol­era Health, a plat­form that links peo­ple with a curat­ed col­lec­tion of health solu­tions, is adding men­tal health com­pa­nies Gin­ger and eMind­ful to its net­work of partners.

Gin­ger, a provider of on-demand vir­tu­al men­tal health care, and eMind­ful, which offers evi­dence-based mind­ful­ness pro­grams, will join Solera’s men­tal and behav­ioral health net­work, where an algo­rithm will con­nect patients with the pro­grams best suit­ed to their needs. [Read more…] about Sol­era Health includes Gin­ger and eMind­ful to expand dig­i­tal men­tal health­care platform

On cognitive reframing and biases, stress, mental health tech, Aduhelm backlash, Britney Spears, and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time nine sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try devel­op­ments to help pro­mote life­long brain and men­tal health.

#1. To low­er stress lev­els and improve prob­lem-solv­ing, prac­tice cog­ni­tive refram­ing instead of venting

“… vent­ing like­ly doesn’t soothe anger as much as aug­ment it. That’s because encour­ag­ing peo­ple to act out their anger makes them relive it in their bod­ies, strength­en­ing the neur­al path­ways for anger and mak­ing it eas­i­er to get angry the next time around. Stud­ies on vent­ing anger (with­out effec­tive feed­back), whether online or ver­bal­ly, have also found it to be gen­er­al­ly unhelp­ful … To get out of that, you can ask the per­son to step back and help you reframe your expe­ri­ence by ask­ing, “How should I think about this dif­fer­ent­ly?” or “What should I do in this situation?”

#2. Head­space and Gin­ger merge to expand and scale up dig­i­tal men­tal health

“The new com­pa­ny would find it push­ing well beyond its cur­rent mind­ful­ness focus to, “pro­vide the full spec­trum of proven, effec­tive vir­tu­al sup­port – from mind­ful­ness and med­i­ta­tion, to text-based behav­ioral health coach­ing, to video-based ther­a­py and psy­chi­a­try – for all types of patient populations.”

Ambi­tious move!

#3. How to read, under­stand and write great med­ical research

12 good tips for stu­dents and every­one else

#4. Vet­er­ans Affairs won’t cov­er Biogen’s new “Alzheimer’s drug” giv­en con­cerns over safe­ty and lack of evidence

Their inde­pen­dent review con­cludes that “giv­en the lack of evi­dence of a robust and mean­ing­ful clin­i­cal ben­e­fit and the known safe­ty sig­nal, we rec­om­mend against offer­ing this agent to patients with Alzheimer’s demen­tia (mild or oth­er­wise) or mild cog­ni­tive impairment.”

#5. Alzheimer’s & Demen­tia researchers chal­lenge FDA’s approval of Aduhelm giv­en lack of evi­dence for beta-amy­loid as a marker

A strong call to “learn how this reg­u­la­to­ry fail­ure occurred and to ensure that it doesn’t occur again”

#6. Debunk­ing four myths about deci­sion-mak­ing capac­i­ty to keep Brit­ney Spears and oth­ers safe

Address­ing the ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy about con­ser­va­tor­ships, a USC Pro­fes­sor of Law, Psy­chol­o­gy, and Psy­chi­a­try shares a great arti­cle to debunk these all-too-com­mon myths

#7. Study exam­ines com­mon cog­ni­tive bias­es (have you tried this brain teas­er?) and ways to mit­i­gate them

If you have not encoun­tered the “Lin­da brain teas­er” before, please give it a try! If you have, you’ll enjoy the new paper titled Tver­sky and Kahneman’s Cog­ni­tive Illu­sions: Who Can Solve Them, and Why?

#8. Inte­grat­ing music, move­ment and stroke reha­bil­i­ta­tion, MedRhythms rais­es $25M to devel­op and com­mer­cial­ize dig­i­tal therapeutic

Fas­ci­nat­ing approach to gait training.

#9. Neu­rotech start-up Paradromics rais­es $20M to address brain-relat­ed dis­or­ders via next-gen brain-com­put­er interfaces

Neu­ralink vs. Paradromics vs. non-inva­sive plat­forms — quite a stim­u­lat­ing space to track

 

Wish­ing you and yours a hap­py and healthy back-to-school and month of September,

The Sharp­Brains Team

Headspace and Ginger merge to expand and scale up digital mental health

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Head­space and Gin­ger are merg­ing to form Head­space Health (TechCrunch):

Med­i­ta­tion app Head­space this morn­ing announced plans to merge with on-demand men­tal health ser­vice Gin­ger. Bar­ring unfore­seen reg­u­la­to­ry road­blocks, the two com­pa­nies will com­bine to form Head­space Health. The new orga­ni­za­tion would sport a com­bined val­ue of $3 bil­lion and a head­count of more than 800.

The merg­er comes dur­ing accel­er­at­ed usage of both par­ties, as a seem­ing­ly end­less pan­dem­ic has put a strain on men­tal health across the globe and many have turned to vir­tu­al solu­tions to address the grow­ing prob­lem. [Read more…] about Head­space and Gin­ger merge to expand and scale up dig­i­tal men­tal health

Four trends accelerating mental health innovation in the COVID/ post-COVID era

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The mon­ey behind men­tal health: How the pan­dem­ic increased inno­va­tion, invest­ment in behav­ioral health care (Fierce Healthcare):

Ear­li­er this month, Mod­ern Health marked a mile­stone few com­pa­nies ever reach: uni­corn status.

With the help of its lat­est $74 mil­lion fund­ing round, the start­up, which serves as a men­tal health ben­e­fits plat­form for employ­ers, topped a $1 bil­lion val­u­a­tion. [Read more…] about Four trends accel­er­at­ing men­tal health inno­va­tion in the COVID/ post-COVID era

Can biofeedback-based videogames help children better manage stress? Magellan Health and Mightier secure $2 million NIMH grant to investigate

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Might­i­er and Mag­el­lan Health Launch NIMH-Fund­ed Research to Improve Out­comes in Chil­dren’s Men­tal Health through the Use of Video Games (press release):

Might­i­er, provider of a ground-break­ing video game sys­tem for teach­ing chil­dren emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion, today announced the com­pa­ny has been award­ed a $2 mil­lion grant from the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health (NIMH) to sup­port research on the impact of video games on improv­ing chil­dren’s men­tal health. [Read more…] about Can biofeed­back-based videogames help chil­dren bet­ter man­age stress? Mag­el­lan Health and Might­i­er secure $2 mil­lion NIMH grant to investigate