To deal with the growing mental health crisis that children and adolescents suffer and the difficulties that families have in accessing treatments for disorders such as anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), two doctors affiliated with the Hospital McLean have launched an innovative virtual treatment program called InStride Health.
InStride Health, which currently operates in Massachusetts and plans to expand its services nationally, has raised $26 million in venture capital, including Mass General Brigham Ventures, .406 Ventures and Valtruis.
InStride Health offers a virtual care model in which children and adolescents with moderate to severe anxiety and OCD participate in individual, family and group therapy sessions, coaching and medication management tailored to their needs.
Finding any of these services locally can be challenging for families due to limited availability and long waiting lists for a small pool of specialty mental health providers. This prompted Mona Potter, MD, and Kathryn Boger, PhD, ABPP, founding co-directors of the McLean Anxiety Mastery Program (MAMP), to seek a virtual solution that would provide more convenient access to comprehensive, evidence-based care directly to children and teenagers
“Over nearly two decades of clinical work, I’ve seen how anxiety and OCD can be debilitating and overwhelming for families,” said Potter, InStride’s chief medical officer and co-founder, who previously served as chief medical officer of the McLean Child and Adolescent Outpatient Services. where she helped build the MAMP and the McLean School Consultation Service, where she still consults. “I’ve also seen how life-changing the right treatment can be. It’s been heartbreaking to see how hard it is for families to get help, with too many children ending up needlessly in emergency rooms or inpatient units. That’s why it was essential to building InStride and making -us in a bigger part of the solution.”
The pediatric mental health crisis leaves gaps for essential treatments
Mental health challenges are a growing epidemic among America’s children and adolescents. Nearly one in five children in the United States has a mental, emotional, or behavioral disorder such as anxiety, depression, and OCD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, these families struggle to access appropriate care, with only around 20 percent of affected children receiving treatment from a mental health specialist. Mental health challenges have only been exacerbated by isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to federal survey data.
Without access to helpful treatments, these children and adolescents experience challenges in school and may also be at risk of having a crisis that leads to emergency treatment in a hospital.
These consequences could be prevented with early interventions and effective treatment, which led Potter and Boger to try to apply the successes they saw from the MAMP program to a more accessible and scalable model of virtual care.
“We could no longer sit idly by as we heard from countless families stuck on long waiting lists as their child’s symptoms worsened,” said Boger, InStride’s chief clinical officer and co-founder and program director. founding clinician of MAMP, where she is still a senior consultant. “InStride gives us the ability to reach more children and teens with anxiety and OCD and provide them with the right care when they need it most.”
Evidence-based model of care reinforced by hospital and industry association
Children and adolescents between the ages of 7 and 22 who have moderate to severe anxiety and/or OCD (and may have depression, ADHD, high-functioning autism) are eligible to enroll in InStride. The treatment schedule consists of two to four months of intensive care, followed by two months of reduced care and a maintenance phase, as needed. Treatment sessions are tailored to each family’s needs and are designed to fit their schedules. All sessions are provided virtually where clinicians use evidence-based therapy approaches such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT ) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).
Services are covered by a growing list of insurance companies in the New England area and, due to the platform’s focus and physician portfolio, generally do not have waiting lists. Interested families can complete an online application after which a member of the care team will schedule a virtual intake appointment.
McLean Hospital, part of Mass General Brigham, offers a range of advisory services to continually improve InStride treatment programs with real-world field experience.
“There is power in the InStride-McLean collaboration,” said Scott L. Rauch, MD, president and chief psychiatrist at McLean Hospital. “During their tenure at McLean, Drs. Potter and Boger have demonstrated a wealth of experience and passion for helping children and families with anxiety. They are leaders in pediatric mental health and we are excited to work with them as they expand access to outpatient anxiety care and achieve their vision.”
The launch of InStride represents the first commercialization of a Mass General Brigham hospital care pathway, a growth opportunity for the future that translates the expertise and care capabilities of MGB and its affiliated hospitals to a patient population wider Carl Berke, PhD, General Partner of Brigham Ventures, serves on the firm’s Board of Directors.