Welcome to The Census, your weekly roundup of what matters in behavioral healthcare.

Top stories this week: 

• On Our Radar: The $55B+ digital mental health market.

• Catch Up Quick: The latest news headlines in under two minutes. 

• One Good Thing: Rescue dogs are saving veteran lives.

Let’s dive in.

- Shân

Total reading time: ~4.5 minutes.

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On Our Radar

What we’re watching this week 

💻 Global Digital Mental Health Market to Reach $55B+ by 2030

Besides a CAGR of 18%+ (!), here’s what you need to know from the latest market report. 

The digital mental health market has had a turbulent few years. 

First was the rapid (some may say unchecked) growth during the pandemic. Then the space faced a reckoning as make-a-quick-buck solutions sank and patients and clinicians returned to in-person care.

But things are normalizing.

Driven by global staffing shortages and a soaring mental health crisis, analysts believe the industry’s high growth rate is now a considered one.  

They say:

➡ We’ll continue to see a very high uptake of digital solutions by healthcare providers, educational institutions, governments, and corporate organizations. 

• Not surprising, but this does reflect a shift toward patient-centric care and greater accessibility to mental healthcare tools

➡ However, key considerations for behavioral healthcare providers include:

• Ensuring confidentiality and security of patient data (ahem)

• Integrating new tech like AI + wearables (A Helpful Read)

• Addressing the high cost of services

➡ This is how digital health startups can stand out in today’s landscape, per MedCity News. 

And, related: PitchBook also just released their (considerably unremarkable) Digital Health Report.

• Spoilers: The vertical is stabilizing and while funding is decent, it remains well below pandemic-era highs as investors once again look to high-quality startups

Let’s get to your news headlines.

Catch Up Quick

This week’s top stories

News & Announcements

🧒 Autism provider ABS Kids nearly doubled its footprint in 2023 (we’d be amiss if we didn’t leave this opinion piece here).

📝 Value-based contracts for autism therapy providers can be “wildly beneficial” — but also challenging.  

💰 Hospital facility fees are becoming more common, adding billions to the cost of care in their outpatient centers.

⚡️ The FDA is moving to ban the use of electrical stimulation devices meant to reduce self-injurious or aggressive behavior.

🏫 Schools will be able to access Congress’ “huge pot of money” for mental health funding under a new bill. 

🌿 SUD facilities are turning to evidence-based design as we learn more about the impact of physical spaces on well-being (called it).  

💰 Congress is taking another stab at growing funding for Medicaid behavioral health expenditures.

❤️‍🩹 The Institute for Non-Suicidal Self-injury has launched a teen NSSI IOP in Coppell, Texas. 

🔮 Ibogaine likely won’t be approved as an OUD treatment, a top US addiction researcher says.

🕵️ Familiarity with new models within Medicaid is opening the door for value-based care in behavioral health.

⛔ However, despite years of discourse around value-based care, payers remain fixated on access.

🍔 Alsana has expanded its eating disorder campus in St. Louis with a 5k-square-foot multi-level care facility.

🏥 Your Six Recovery, a specialized SUD treatment program for US Veterans, opened a new facility in Cummington, Massachusetts.

💻 Digital outpatient platform Grow Therapy has partnered with Big Health, highlighting a solution to digital therapeutics’ biggest problem: patient acquisition.

🤔 House Republicans are asking why billions of dollars intended for mental health remain unspent.

💉 The California state government is fighting local bans on needle exchange programs. 

🏛️ California also narrowly passed the (controversial) $6B+ Proposition 1 ‘homelessness measure’ that will dramatically restructure its mental health system.

💸 Biden has unveiled a ~$22B plan to tackle the opioid epidemic and boost SUD treatment; it includes eliminating the X-Waiver and giving special attention to SUD treatment for vets. 

💰 Spring Health will leverage both tech and in-person care to boost profitability, plus turn to “coaches outside of just traditional therapists” — and they’re not alone in this. 

🧠 Quartet launched a new hybrid SMI program in partnership with Clover Health.

👀 A federal appeals court is deciding if opioid distribution is a public nuisance as it reviews a lawsuit against three major US distributors.

The Latest Studies

💔 US overdose deaths hit a record high in 2022. 

🔎 The Mental Health Screening Market is set to reach $1.8B by 2029.

💥 An explosion in demand for ABA clinicians is leaving autism therapy companies fighting to retain clinicians, a new study suggests.

🧠 ED visits for psychiatric care are rising due to the shortage of mental health professionals and the high demand for mental health and SUD services. 

🍄 PsyRx announced a successful toxicological safety study on the combined treatment of SSRI + ibogaine.

📲 The accelerating teen mental health crisis is being increasingly linked to smartphones.

🫄 Telehealth may be an effective way for pregnant people to continue MAT for OUD, per JAMA. 

🗣️ Vocal biomarkers can be a reliable indicator of mental health — promising for voice-based mental health monitoring. 

👀 Private payers retain profits by denying and delaying claims; here’s what revenue cycle leaders can do about it.

Tech & AI

🤖 HiMS unveiled AxiomEHR, an AI-powered solution for behavioral health care providers that can save clinicians two hours a day.

📲 Earkick is one of hundreds of free new apps trying to address the teen mental health crisis — but they aren’t regulated by the FDA. 

🛠️ NVIDIA announced about two dozen new AI-powered, healthcare-focused tools at its 2024 GTC conference. 

🤝 Plus, Abridge & NVIDIA have partnered to supercharge AI-powered clinical documentation amid the boom in tech that listens into patient visits to churn out notes. 

💡 Syllable acquired Actium Health to ramp up AI-driven solutions that optimize patient capacity, reduce staff workload, and improve patient outcomes.

Funding Rounds & Investor Moves

🧠 $50M for Lightfully Behavioral Health, which is “seeking to basically be the DaVita of mental health” (let’s just hope they don't have the same collusion aspirations).  

🍄 $150M for Cybin to advance psychedelic therapy for depression.

💻 $33M for Brightside Health, a digital psychiatry provider.

🤖 $53M for Hippocratic AI, a digital staffing marketplace where health systems can “hire” generative AI assistants.

🫶 $3M for Conduce Health, a healthcare tech firm focused on value-based care. 

👀 Federal agencies may be cracking down on PE investment in health care, which could affect behavioral health dealmaking.

💊 Still, nearly a third of OTPs are now owned by PE firms, up from just over half back in 2011.

🤑 Acadia Healthcare will focus on M&A in 2024 and beyond as it looks to hoover up even more comprehensive treatment centers. 

💰 IOPs and PHPs continue to make headlines in the M&A space (more on the trend here). 

One Good Thing

❤️ 1,000 Veterans Have Been Paired with Life-Saving Service Dogs

Twenty veterans die by suicide each day. Trained service dogs can effectively bring down this risk. 

K9s for Warriors pairs vets with rescue dogs and just celebrated their 1,000th duo (below).  

That’s it for this week, see you next Wednesday with the latest headlines!

- Shân

P.S. If you have a question or suggestion, reply to this mail. I read every one. 

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