Data: Rock Health analysis for Morning Consult. Analysis includes US-based digital health startups addressing mental health, substance use disorders or developmental disorders for children and adolescents, including companies that also serve other groups.

“These companies have popped up and begun to operate in a handful of states, but it will take three key moves to create strong footprints: building a clinical workforce of ‘A’ players, negotiating national payer contracts and the ability to replicate validated models again and again,” said president of Rock Health’s advisory arm, Tom Cassels.

One such company is Charlie Health, which launched in 2020 as a virtual intensive outpatient programme for teens and young adults dealing with severe mental health issues, with the goal of granting them agency in their care. Charlie Health offers individual and family therapy, and also puts together groups of six patients each with similar challenges and backgrounds for group sessions.

“To find six 12-year-old girls who are in an acute crisis right now, who all have had one suicide attempt, are smoking weed, have purple hair and like anime would be really hard” in any given community, said Charlie Health’s co-founder and chief executive, Carter Barnhart. “But virtual, we’re able to do that.”

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