Florida Blue’s behavioral health benefit manager, New Directions, acquired digital behavioral health company, Tridiuum, which has automated behavioral health screening, triaging, and matching capabilities.

Two companies have combined to improve the delivery of mental health services.

People are taking to grass pastures to find healing through interactions with, of all things, so-called therapy cows.

Employers are making a change regarding workplace mental health.

The pandemic has highlighted the need for employer-provided mental health benefits, and in 2021 employees are using these benefits more than ever before.

Colorado legislators, caregivers, patients, and community members will assemble the Behavioral Health Transformational Task Force in August to allocate the $450 million dollars dedicated to behavioral health from the American Rescue Plan Act.

NYC’s Police-Free Mental Health Response Team Is Helping People Get Treatment. The NYC pilot program, known as B-Heard, responds to nonviolent mental health calls with paramedics and mental health professionals instead of police.

CVS Health is adding mental health counseling to the services offered at about a dozen of its stores with HealthHUBS in Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas as a part of a pilot program that launched in January, with plans to expand to 34.

In one of the largest studies about the impact of social determinants of health initiatives, 544 insurers, hospitals, physician groups and community organizations weighed in on the status of their programs, unmet needs, challenges and recent successes.

In this fireside chat style 2-hour Q&A we tried to go behind the scenes with 5 companies interviewing 7 healthcare innovators around their novel approach to addiction and depression recovery and to changing the path for those with poor housing, food insecurity, PTSD and fall risk from isolation.

Project Angel Food in California provides over 2,000 meals a week during the pandemic to the frail elderly and people with serious illnesses, such as heart disease, or those coming out of surgery like a bypass, up from 1,600 meals a week in 2019. God’s Love We Deliver, a New York non-profit, also reports a record number of home deliveries since March.

Centers dedicated to being efficient in a potential suicide and handling high-risk mental health situations are popping up in a number of US cities. They are funded typically from a combination of corporate, hospital, university and sometimes government funds, and they are designed to give police a better place to bring people who are in a crisis and free up crowded hospital ERs.

There continue to be a host of ways to head off suicide or talk to a mental health counselor. 988 is now the new number to call to head off a suicide and thank goodness - it's a heck of a lot easier to remember than the previous 800 number that few used! Hotlines continue to try to hire staff.

Financial stress has a way of forcing us to change behavior and, well, this is a doozy: 61% of college students will forgo school this year according to our random poll of 417 incoming freshman and sophomores and more than a third of those “taking a break” report plans to try and ‘start up digital businesses’, namely apps, many partnering with fellow classmates and old friends.

Wigs for people undergoing cancer treatment are big business, costing upwards of $5,000-a-piece and supported by a national network of non-profits, retail salons and annual fundraisers, but the coronavirus has halted the industry, leaving some small start-ups and non-profits to close and patients, in some cases, left without a custom wig.

Parents with children on the spectrum are finding themselves thrust into at-home applied behavioral analysis and learning “to be a therapist” on the fly, like Sam Francis, one dad we talked to last week who says he was “up all night” taking a training course to help his 9-year-old son who “used to go to the center 25 hours a week.”

Parents with children on the spectrum are finding themselves thrust into at-home applied behavioral analysis and learning “to be a therapist” on the fly, like Sam Francis, one dad we talked to last week who says he was “up all night” taking a training course to help his 9-year-old son who “used to go to the center 25 hours a week.”

A half dozen physicians give us a feel for how they are adjusting, responding and planning during the coronavirus pandemic - how much visits are down, are virtual visits working, what are they doing to keep staff safe and respond to patient inquires.

Like the Big 10 basketball conference sending a gaggle of teams to the NCAA march madness tournament, behavioral health services including Cinderella 'telepsych' and nationally known 'addiction treatment' represent two of 5 services in the category to make this year's Top 20 health plan priorities

In an effort to change behavior, the United Health Group's company Optum will begin offering pre-paid debit cards starting in January 2021 so its members buy fresh, healthier foods from specific retailers.