This is an exclusive BHB+ story.
Following the mental health innovation boom sparked by the pandemic in 2020, it may seem as if there are few empty corners left to build from the outside. From the inside, though, providers still see buildable blue sky in value-based care models, interventional psychiatry, integrated care and across emerging AI and data capabilities.
The biggest pivot for success in the behavioral health market will be marked by a shift away from downstream, referral and fee-for-service models that have defined the “norm” for decades.
“The ‘blue sky’ future is where it becomes an always-on layer embedded across the full patient journey,” Dan Ferris, chief growth officer at LifeStance, told Behavioral Health Business. “That shift is especially important in condition-specific care. We’re starting to see the impact in areas like maternal health, oncology and cardiometabolic disease, where behavioral health isn’t ancillary — it’s determinative of outcomes. … Embedding behavioral health directly into those care pathways, rather than referring out, can materially improve outcomes for both patients and the broader healthcare system.”
LifeStance Health (Nasdaq: LFST) is one of the largest outpatient behavioral health operators in the U.S.
But beyond that, the real opportunity, Ferris said, lies in moving toward longitudinal, proactive mental health care plans that leverage data to personalize treatment and identify risk and triage patients to the right care pathways more quickly. That’s also where Dr. David Mou, co-founder of Benchmark Health, sees white space.
“[Primary care providers] PCP and behavioral integration is an overlooked place,” Mou told BHB. “Coming up with a true easy button for PCPs, a true easy button meaning that it takes any age, takes mild, moderate, severe, takes all conditions and treats them like family members. I think that’s really critical. I think that is the future here. ”
As a company, Benchmark Health focuses on mental health triage to more effectively guide patients through the care system. Benchmark works directly with PCPs who can hand off a patient to Benchmark’s licensed mental health professionals. While the company is not a therapy provider, the mental health professional in the loop serves as the patient’s advocate. They conduct a wellness exam and can more effectively evaluate which level of care and resources the patient might need and help connect the dots to access.
Mou and his partner and co-founder, Dr. Tom Insel, who has helped launch several mental health companies in the sector, created Benchmark in 2025.
Triage, metrics and integration are areas that continue to be ripe for innovation as the behavioral health sector pushes for more value-based care reimbursement models, as peers in physical health have. The issues that have been persistent barriers to unlocking more value-based care opportunities can largely be alleviated through AI tools and data analysis, Mou suspects.
“True value-based care is what AI enables today, in a way that has never happened before,” Mou said. “There’s no true value right now. We don’t have that for behavioral health… So, I think that is really important, because once you have an unbiased, truly patient-centered set of metrics… now, the entire field has a north star to turn that trigger point on.”
Once metrics and value are clearly defined for the field, payers will be incentivized to get measurements right themselves and providers can have clear targets to work toward.
But any innovation in behavioral health that wants to be sustainable and viable has to be grounded in data, outcomes and cost-effectiveness. This also means that building workflows and technology that reduce friction for both payers and providers is key, but particularly for payers who are the gatekeepers to innovation in this space. Without their buy-in, access to new models, treatment modalities and more is severely limited.
“At the end of the day, if you can disrupt the status quo by offering a new way to verify workforce readiness with a consistent thing, providing auditable evidence to do that using entirely new technology, then it can fundamentally change the status quo,” Jeremy Rudy, CEO of Sabba, told BHB. “That is just as important as anything… because whether it’s drug sponsors, government officials, patient organizations, veteran organizations… if we can’t secure insurance coverage, a lot of people won’t get access.”
Sabba is a mental health and psychiatry training platform that uses simulation technology specifically to train and teach students and clinicians how to work with patients under the therapeutic use of psychedelics. The platform is used by the University Psychedelic Education Program across 32 universities in 22 states.
While interventional psychiatry methods like transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and psychedelics continue to gain traction and even government interest and funding, it is still early on for the field, but that’s why it’s prime for innovation, right now, Rudy explained.
“It’s a new field of medicine, the first breakthrough treatment since SSRIs came out in the 90s, so over 30 years,” Rudy said. “It has tremendous potential for helping with PTSD, depression, and a host of other things, and it has higher risks than normal therapy. It has higher potential and higher risks.”
Rudy said two powerful things that are happening separately, but simultaneously, will really define innovation in behavioral health going forward: AI and psychedelics. He sees them both as “Promethean” technologies and solutions for the field.
“It’s also the most challenging, because we’re required to not just simulate consciousness but simulate non-ordinary states of consciousness that are unique between different medicines,” Rudy said. “If we can nail it here, in this most difficult‑to‑simulate type of engagement with consciousness, we can support many other areas of behavioral health and broader healthcare.”
What will be needed most operationally, he said, are tools that can actually train clinicians in this fast-developing era of interventional psychiatry innovation and AI.
“Humans learn really well from simulation,” Rudy said. “Our brains sometimes have a hard time distinguishing fiction from reality, and when you repeat any form of repetition, practice and skill, you form those neural pathways, you form those habits, [then] acquire those skills.”
It seems all sides of interventional psychiatry are ripe for growth right now. Since last fall, behavioral health has seen new players enter the scene promising smaller TMS devices for neuromodulation, companies dedicated solely to interventional psychiatry emerge from stealth with as much as $80 million in the bank, and even government support for psychedelics for mental health purposes.
Both Mou and Ferris are aligned with Rudy on that front and anticipate continuing as time goes on.
“We see specialty behavioral health services, like interventional psychiatry, as both clinically effective and commercially sustainable,” Ferris said.
LifeStance has invested in interventional psychiatry methods that are already FDA-approved, like Spravato and TMS for treatment-resistant depression. Ferris said patient demand for these services is growing.
While the U.S. is still behind countries like Australia, which approved MDMA as a treatment for patients with PTSD in 2023, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recently launched a study designated for just that purpose.
Still, even where there is blue sky, it is ultimately to approach all of these new, emerging tools and modalities with caution, Mou advised.
“These are all weapons in the armory against mental illness,” Mou said. “Let’s just look at the data collectively… psychedelics are probably good for some things and not other things, which is true for every drug and every intervention. So, let’s fully look at the data… and then we can decide.”