Hi friend,
No mega-rounds this week but plenty of interesting business and research news for you to be aware of.
Before we jump in, quick reminder that we’re running a Hemingway Session with Jennifer Huberty PhD this week, discussing how to use science to create defensible value in your organisation. If you’re trying to figure out how and why to do good science, you should come along.
Also, we’re hiring! If you know anyone great in London who is interested in a part-time role with Hemingway, please share this with them.
Alright, let’s get into it.
What happened in mental health last week?
Business News:
⏺️ Talkspace released their 2025 earnings, outperforming top and bottom line targets. Revenue grew by 22% to $229M in 2025, with payor revenue up 38%. The company's proprietary LLM, “TalkAI”, entered beta, their psychiatry network size more than doubled, and they noted a 49% improvement in third-session retention. Talkspace’s share price was up 25% on the news. Lifestance, Acadia and Teladoc will all release their 2025 earnings this week. (link)
⏺️ Madison Health Group is buying Magellan Health from Centene. Centene originally acquired Magellan (a managed behavioural health player) for $2.2B in 2021 but have cited increasing operational costs from the company in recent years. (link)
⏺️ GreenShield acquired Kii Health's mental health arm. The deal from the Canadian organisation will support their national EAP ambitions and continues its mental health acquisition strategy dating back to 2021. This was announced first on Feb 5th but missed my radar originally. (link)
⏺️ UM Health Sparrow will build a $83M behavioural health hospital. The facility in Lansing, Michigan will have 64-bed inpatient beds. (link)
⏺️ EmblemHealth agreed to pay $2.5M to settle ghost network violations. The NY Attorney General investigation found several inaccuracies in the insurer’s mental health provider directories making it hard for people to access care. This case puts further pressure on insurers to address behavioural health network adequacy. (link)
⏺️ Solera Health launched a behavioral health network with Calm Health and Lyra. Through their HALO Platform, payers and employers can access different mental health point solutions. (link)
⏺️ Stella Mental Health expanded its interventional psychiatry footprint. The organisation opened its second clinic in Massachusetts which offers access to interventional psychiatry services including Spravato, IV ketamine, and deep TMS, reflecting growing appetite for interventional treatments, especially for treatment resistant depression. (link)
⏺️ New data shows US mental health M&A activity grew by 2% 2025. The report from Mertz Taggart showed a slight uptick in Q4 and presents some interesting trends on the space. Definitely worth a quick scan. (link)
⏺️ Compass Pathways reported positive Phase 3 results for COMP360 psilocybin. Both trials for treatment-resistant depression met endpoints meaning COMP360 could become the first FDA-approved psilocybin medicine. (link)
⏺️ Vanda Pharmaceuticals received FDA approval for BYSANTI™. The new chemical entity was approved as a first-line therapy for bipolar I disorder and schizophrenia. (link)
⏺️ CMS Administrator Dr. Oz endorsed AI avatars for rural mental health access. The public endorsement represented a pretty significant policy signal likely to shape reimbursement and regulatory conversations around AI-delivered mental healthcare. (link)
⏺️ New York State awarded $6M to 3 pilot programs focused on behavioural health crisis intervention. The community programs will test models that minimise police involvement, reflecting growing policy momentum toward alternative crisis response. (link)
⏺️ The CDC released 2024 US suicide data, showing a second consecutive annual decline. Rates remained near decade highs, firearms accounted for more than half of deaths, and many high-rate states saw little change. (link)
⏺️ The UK MHRA approved 17% more clinical investigations in 2025. The record increase - with specific support on brain and AI technologies - signals regulatory tailwinds for neurotechnology in the UK. (link)
⏺️ The UK government announced £20M in grants for addiction technology. The funding represented one of the largest dedicated government pools for drug and alcohol tech in recent memory, signalling clear policy appetite for tech-driven SUD solutions. (link)
⏺️ The Centre for Mental Health UK released its 2025 Future Minds report. The report outlined a 10-year plan to transform mental health services for children and young people. (link)
⏺️ Google.org launched a $30M AI for Science Impact Challenge with funding available for health and life sciences projects. Researches can apply until April 17th, 2026, with selected organisations receiving funding, engineering support, and Google infrastructure. (link)
Research News:
⏺️ Researchers developed “MDD-thinker”, an LLM for major depressive disorder diagnosis. The system achieved high performance in MDD diagnosis, with an accuracy of 0.8268, showing better performance than conventional machine learning models. (link)
⏺️ An article in npj Digital Medicine discussed agentic AI in psychiatric care and proposed a roadmap for responsible implementation. (link)
⏺️ Circuit Breaker Labs published a white-paper on agentic red-teaming for mental health AI safety. The approach introduced clinically realistic pressure-testing of conversational AI at scale, designed to surface hidden risks before deployment. (link)
⏺️ A Phase 2a trial of SPL026, a form of intravenous DMT from Helus Pharma, met endpoints for MDD. The result added momentum to rapid-acting psychedelic treatments targeting the broader MDD market, beyond treatment-resistant cases. (link)
⏺️ An npj Digital Medicine study validated a multidimensional computerised adaptive assessment for youth mental health. Across 1,734 young people aged 12–25, the tool reduced assessment items by 69% - from 49 to 15.3 per person - and cut completion time from 10.5 to 3.3 minutes, while maintaining excellent agreement for suicidality (ICC = 0.96) and anxiety (ICC = 0.92). (link)
⏺️ Surgo Health released two reports on GenAI usage by young people. Key findings included that social and financial context shapes AI's impact on wellbeing, and that interaction quality matters more than screen time quantity. (link)
⏺️ A Wellcome-funded study found that a Tetris-based digital tool reduced intrusive flashbacks in healthcare workers. The intervention used mental rotation -activating similar visual brain regions to those triggered by flashbacks - to reprocess how traumatic memories were stored. (link)
That’s all for this week. If you’d like to discuss this news with like-minded peers, consider becoming a Hemingway Pro Member. You will join our community of over 350 mental health leaders, and get access to exclusive content. You can learn more here.
Keep fighting the good fight!
Steve Duke
Founder of Hemingway
