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Headspace, best known for its app that guides people through meditation, now wants to help more of its customers get mental health coaching.
The Santa Monica, CA-based is making the push into mental health at a time when many other direct-to-consumer mental health businesses have struggled. Over the past few years, companies like Teladoc’s BetterHelp and Talkspace, which both offer therapy, have cited rising customer acquisition costs as a challenge to growing their businesses. And in January, outgoing CEO Russell Glass told Endpoints News that Headspace’s consumer business “hasn’t really grown,” while its business selling to employers has.
Headspace president Christine Evans said the intent was to offer more services to the consumer members the company already works with while avoiding some of the acquisition costs that come with building a consumer-focused mental health business from scratch.
“It’s very different than having to go out and acquire new members at large,” Evans said.
The coaching services are an aspect of Headspace’s existing business from the 2021 deal to combine with Ginger, a virtual therapy startup working with employers. Up until now, however, coaching has only been offered to Headspace’s employer clients. For about $100 a month, an individual can get three coaching sessions. Some health plans including Kaiser Permanente and Cigna cover the visits. The company is looking at adding therapy services as well later this year, Evans said.
Through coaches — mostly full-time salaried Headspace employees, Evans said — ideally Headspace can address some of the gaps in mental health care. Evans compared it to primary care using nurse practitioners to supplement the work doctors can do.
“That coaching layer of service provides members with the support that they can get the things that don’t necessarily require a therapist,” Evans said. That could be things like managing stress, helping with sleep or establishing better relationships.
To be sure, Evans said, the plan is still to keep growing Headspace’s enterprise business, which the company still sees as the business driving Headspace’s growth. Headspace, last valued at $3 billion after the Headspace-Ginger deal, was cash-flow positive in the first quarter of 2024, a spokesperson for the company confirmed.
Glass said in March that he plans to leave the CEO role later in the year, citing a chance for the board to find a leader to take Headspace to its “next phase of growth.” Headspace is one of a number of companies waiting on the sidelines as the public markets remain closed to digital health startups.