Hi friend,
I’m in Japan.
More specifically, I’m in a tiny coffee shop in Hokkaido, watching the man behind the counter carefully make me a coffee. Happy place!
It’s really beautiful here. Japan has a peaceful nature in its landscape, its rituals and its people that I find very therapeutic.
But I can’t stay here long. I’m on my way to London (again) after seven years in Australia. New chapter and all that…
Despite these adventures, I’m still keeping right on top of everything happening in mental health. And it was another busy week…
What happened in mental health last week?
Business News:
⏺️ Spring acquired Alma. Is this the biggest mental health tech deal ever? I think so. It’s expected to close in Q2 of this year and I’ll be writing about it soon. Feel free to share any reflections with me. (link)
⏺️ NOCD acquired trauma care provider Rebound Health. (link)
⏺️ Wysa was awarded a £5.3m grant from Wellcome to scale their intervention for adolescent girls in India. They are the latest recipient of Wellcome’s large scale funding program from last year. (link)
⏺️ Kooth updated their 2025 revenue guidance to £63.3m, which will be a 5% YoY decline from 2024. Some of this decline will be due to FX changes. They also shared new usage numbers from their large California contract, sharing that 144,000 people have registered on their app, Soluna, and that they have delivered 51,000 coaching sessions. (link)
⏺️ HHS Secretary, RFK Jr. announced $100m in new grants for a pilot program aimed at addressing homelessness and substance use recovery. He also announced $10M for the Assisted Outpatient Treatment grant program to support adults with SMI. (link)
⏺️ OpenAI launched a new €500k grant for EMEA-based NGOs and research organisations working on how AI affects young people’s safety, wellbeing and development. They launched a similar grant late last year for research on AI and mental health and selected proposals should have been notified last month. (link)
⏺️ Ok this is a weird one... The business “MentalHealth.com” announced plans to raise a $100m growth round. Huh? Now, I’ve never actually heard of this company and it’s not clear what they do… But they’ve got a banging domain! Their founder also owns the therapy.ai domain and seems to come from a background of buying high profile domains like this. Anyway, weird… (link)
⏺️ In Israel, mental health investment increased by 150% to $352 million in 2025. The report from Startup Nation Capital reported that during the same period deal numbers actually decreased (from twenty in 2024 to thirteen) with more capital going into fewer companies. The report also incudes a good map of all 178 companies in this field. (link)
⏺️ In England, the NIHR announced a £55 m investment to establish five new Mental Health Research Groups in underserved areas. Teams will be embedded in local settings to tackle inequalities, focusing on hard-to-reach populations to improve mental health care access and outcomes. (link)
⏺️ In the UK, the MHRA issued new guidance and online tools to help people safely choose and use mental health apps. The resources outline five checks (what claims the app makes, who it’s for, evidence of effectiveness, data privacy, and regulatory approval) that users and clinicians should review. I’m a fan of any attempts to help users make better choices with mental health products. I’m keen to see if this has an impact. (link)
⏺️ In Australia, the government committed $13m to expand its network of free perinatal mental health centres from seven sites to twenty.
⏺️ Bicycle Health founder Ankit Gupta announced that he is stepping down from his role as CEO of Bicycle Health. Rick Dean will be the new CEO, and Ankit will remain as a board member and advisor. (link)
⏺️ In Japan, the child suicide rate hit a record high for the second year in a row. At the same time, Japan’s overall suicide rate has hit a fourty-five year low. (link)
⏺️ In France, the government moved to ban social media for under-15s. (link)
Research News:
⏺️ Slingshot AI published a new safety study of Ash. The study did two things. First, it tested Ash (and other LLMs) using simulated prompts form established safety tests. Second, it audited 20,000 real conversations from users. In the simulated tests, Ash significantly outperformed other products like ChatGPT. In the real conversations, Ash detected and provided crisis resources for 100% of suicide risk content, and 99.985% of messages with non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) risk content. The study does have some limitations, including the fact that for the real conversation analysis, it only assessed conversations that were flagged by Slingshot’s “Judge LLM”. But that said, perhaps the most interesting conclusion the authors make is that simulated prompts may not be a good way to test the safety of LLMs. This would make it hard to reliably assess safety before a product is actually deployed. We need lots more research and constructive discussion on this topic. (link)
⏺️ A meta-analysis of 19 randomised trials found that anti-inflammatory treatments significantly reduced depressive symptoms and anhedonia in patients with elevated C-reactive protein levels. The findings suggest an “inflammatory” subtype of depression that responds poorly to standard antidepressants but may improve with targeted anti-inflammatory therapies or lifestyle interventions. (link)
⏺️ Flourish Science submitted its second RCT for peer review, replicating the primary results of their first trial and finding improvements in anxiety and prevention of depression on a population level as measured by GAD-2 and PHQ-2. Flourish seem to be quietly leading the way in building an evidence base for AI interventions. (link)
⏺️ Wellcome published a great report on what we know about how interventions for youth depression and anxiety work. In summary, there is a huge gap here and we need lots more work to understand what actually improved long term outcomes, and not just short term symptom reduction. (link)
That’s all for this week. I hope you found it valuable.
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Keep fighting the good fight!
Steve Duke
Founder of Hemingway
