News & Insights
Leading Bend Health’s Series A
The past few years have been challenging for all of us, as we navigated the Covid pandemic, adjusted to significant changes in our work and personal lives, faced economic uncertainty, and experienced social and political unrest. As a result, we’ve seen mental health issues skyrocket over the last few years in the US. As I became a new mom during the pandemic, I wanted to know – how are all of our children doing and how have they been impacted?
The stats are disheartening — our children in the US are experiencing a youth mental health crisis. Depression and anxiety amongst youth doubled during the pandemic, with 25% of youth suffering from depressive symptoms and 20% experiencing anxiety, leading to a significant increase in emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts by youth. In fact, suicide has become the second leading cause of death among 10-24 year olds, having increased by 57% since 2007. The Child Mind Institute estimates that the psychological long-tail impact of COVID-19 is expected to last another 10 years. To make matters worse, we currently have a massive shortage of child psychiatrists — 71% of US counties have no child psychiatrist, which means 3 out of 4 kids who need access are unable to find care. When they are able to find help, the standard of care today is still massively lacking in strong data and patient outcomes.
Today, we are proud to lead the Series A in Bend Health – a virtual care platform providing evidence-based mental health services to families with children 1 to 17, supporting a broad range of issues from subacute (such as stress, sibling rivalry, tech addiction, anxiety, and depression) to severe mental illness (including OCD, trauma, occurring substance use, and more). With its collaborative care model, Bend has a whole-person, whole-family approach that combines virtual visits, chat messaging, and integrated digital experiences. Its underlying technology platform leverages data and AI to track patient progress, enabling the first scalable and integrated care solution in pediatric mental health. Bend accelerates access to care from 18 months to a matter of days for many communities that were previously lacking access.
Bend is led by co-founders Kurt Roots and Dr. Monika Roots, who both have deep experience in the behavioral health space. Kurt led Data Science at Teladoc focused on optimizing patient outcomes, and Monika is a highly-regarded child and adolescent psychiatrist who deeply understands the needs of families and how to deliver outcomes-driven and personalized patient care. In a space that is massively constrained in terms of clinician supply, Monika’s experiences as Chief Medical Officer of many behavioral health companies such as Sanvello have demonstrated her ability to build and scale clinical teams with strong retention, culture, and clinical excellence.
Today, the company also announced several exciting partnerships and milestones along with $32M in funding. United Healthcare, Magellan and other insurers now offer Bend services as a covered benefit to more than 170 million people. Several employers are already offering Bend to more than 650,000 employees. The company also has many integrated partnerships with hospital systems. Bend is already available in all 50 states, and will also be expanding beyond ages 1-17 to 26 later this year.
Welcome Bend to the Maveron portfolio. We are looking forward to a near future where all kids have access to the mental healthcare and resources they need to build the resilience to “bend, not break”.
Grace
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