While the conversations at Health Evolution are private and for members only (check out the fellowship application here!), it’s worth highlighting the topical conversations industry leaders are having in behavioral health.

At Health Evolution’s recent “Roundtable on Innovations in Mental and Behavioral Health,” participants including state-level health plan leaders, virtual mental health executives, specialized care center mavericks, and more, shared successes and learnings to both establish current innovations in youth mental health, and ideate on innovations to come.

Supportiv’s Founder and CEO Helena Plater-Zyberk detailed for fellow participants how Supportiv has been able to make strides with the teen population of Kansas. In partnership with United Healthcare, Supportiv has provided 24/7, anonymous, moderated peer support chats to over 17,000 high school students in Wichita and beyond – and the results speak to the promise of digital mental health interventions for teens.

These 17,000+ users were 32% BIPOC and had a median age of 15 years old. They rated their experiences an average 4.9 out of 5 stars, in response to the question “Do you feel better?” and saw marked emotional improvements as measured by third party AI sentiment scoring models: on average, over 57% decrease in stress, 65% decrease in loneliness, 69% decrease in anger, over 58% decrease in sadness, and a whopping 184% increase in optimism across the course of a single Supportiv chat.

The takeaway? Teens, who are notoriously difficult to engage with behavioral health interventions, respond to digital interventions that meet their population-specific needs: believable promises of anonymity and non-judgment, no cost, little to no parental involvement, and no logistic barriers such as the need for transportation or scheduling.

If we are to better serve teens across the behavioral health industry and help establish teens’ foundational mental wellbeing into adulthood, in pursuit of addressing our population-wide mental health crisis, there are certainly lessons to be learned from this program.

Learn more here.