Mantra Health Secures $22M Series A; Launches Program to Support Students with Long-Term Mental Healthcare Needs
- Heather Harman
- Jan 23, 2022
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 20, 2024
– VMG Partners led the round, with new investors joining the cap table including New Markets Venture Partners, Elements Health Ventures, 14W, and Alumni Ventures.
– Proceeds will help grow the digital mental health clinic’s diverse provider network, launch new clinical products, and expand its insurance partnerships.
– Mantra debuts “Insurance Referral Program” for Higher Education to support both short-term, episodic care and long-term mental healthcare needs for young adults.
Mantra Health, the preeminent digital mental health clinic focused on young adults, today announced a $22 million Series A investment, led by VMG Partners. The round includes new investors New Markets Venture Partners, Elements Health Ventures, 14W, and Alumni Ventures. Returning investors included Canaan Partners, Global Founders Capital, Baleon Capital, Western Tech Investments, and City Light Capital.
Mantra Health introduced its Higher Education solution in the Fall of 2020 and was immediately embraced by campus counseling centers that focused on quality for its evidence-based, collaborative approach that helped students increase access to care and achieve positive clinical outcomes. As of this month, Mantra’s Sponsored Care Program is deployed on 52 campuses across the U.S., including Penn State, Miami Dade College, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ensuring more than 500,000 students can access timely psychiatry and therapy services over telehealth. As a result of positive student outcomes in the first year of deployment, 100% of Mantra’s partner schools renewed and expanded their partnerships.
“As investors in digital health, we’ve seen how specialization really enables companies to provide the best care possible through new forms of care and delivery models,” said Ally Tam, Partner at VMG Partners. “Culturally, we’re at the point of no return when it comes to mental health advocacy. COVID and other factors have created a perfect storm that requires immediate support systems to be built to address the rising mental health crisis among young adults. Mantra Health has emerged as the preferred provider for universities/colleges given their collaborative and tailored approach to delivering quality mental health for young adults and their unique campus lives.”
On the heels of the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory warning the public about the youth mental health crisis, Mantra’s Series A funding will allow the company to continue to invest in some of the advisory’s specific action items, including ensuring young adults have access to high-quality, affordable, and culturally competent mental health care. The capital will be used to grow Mantra’s diverse provider network nationwide while maintaining over a 50% average of clinicians identifying as BIPOC or LGBTQ+, enhance its clinical infrastructure to increase positive student outcomes, and broaden its ability to improve the mental wellbeing of young adults from the subacute to the severely mental ill. In order to scale at the rate needed the company will also quadruple its team in the next year, with roles open across all functions.
Additionally, Mantra is dedicating proceeds of this round to significantly scale the Mantra College Mental Health Provider Diversity Scholarship. The scholarship launched in June 2021 to offer financial support to marginalized identities pursuing a degree related to mental health and completing work in a university or college counseling center to help reduce the racial disparities that exist in the mental health field.
“There is an urgent demand to remove the barriers that exist for young adults to access evidence-based and culturally competent mental health care,” said Ed Gaussen, co-founder & CEO of Mantra Health. “With this infusion of new capital, we will focus on removing these obstacles by handling more complex diagnoses, building a more robust provider network across 50 states, and doubling down on insurance partnerships. We’re also excited to continue investing in the future of mental health professionals through our Diversity Scholarship program to make sure all young adults in America have the mental support they need to succeed within their reach.”
Launching a New Program to Support Students with Long Term Mental Healthcare Needs
Mantra Health’s Insurance Referral Program leverages its virtual provider group and software ecosystem to allow partner schools to refer students directly into long-term care and access all the benefits Mantra’s care model offers.
Historically, when a student has been in need of long-term mental healthcare, their counselor would refer them to community providers where they typically face long waits, and worse, often drop out of treatment, when it’s most critical for them to be seen.
The Insurance Referral Program is designed to work with the student’s insurance as the payer instead of the school, the benefits of this model include:
Digital referral pathway over 2x more effective than traditional referrals to community providers
Students can match with a provider of their choice from a large network of diverse providers, with care delivered through Mantra’s proprietary platform
Option for on-campus care teams to collaborate with Mantra providers through Mantra’s Collaboration Portal, for both ongoing care and crisis
Convenient appointments times for students at night and during weekends
Offset the overall cost of Mantra’s program by working with student health insurance plans
Mantra is already in-network with Optum, Cigna, as well as other local payers, and has launched the Insurance Referral Program as a pilot at one of the largest state schools in the country in collaboration with their student health insurance plan.
“An internal clinical outcomes study for the 2020-2021 school year showed that 91% of students referred to Mantra from a campus clinician make it to their first appointment,” said Matt Kennedy, co-founder and COO of Mantra Health. “This data point far surpassed the status quo of just over 40% of students making it to their first appointment when referred to a community provider by a campus-based provider. What’s more, 54% of students stated that Mantra’s program helped them stay in school, at a time when mental health has been linked to the leading cause of drop-out. With our program’s ROI proven, both in terms of enhanced life outcomes for young adults at colleges and universities in parallel to the economic case for our higher education customers, we couldn’t be more excited to accelerate Mantra’s ability to impact the lives of more young adults over the coming years.”
To learn more about Mantra Health and the Insurance Referral Program visit MantraHealth.com/Universities.
Press release here.