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Suicide intervention startup Vita Health raised $22.5 million in Series A funds, CEO Lynn Hamilton tells Axios exclusively.

Why it matters: As the mental health epidemic rages on, suicide remains a tragic and thorny problem that few startups are thoroughly tackling.

Details: LFE Capital, Athyrium Capital Management, Flare Capital Partners and CVS Ventures participated in the round.

Connecticut Innovations, HopeLab and CU Innovations joined.

Hamilton says Vita will use the capital to expand its clinical team and invest in operations and clinical technologies to improve the patient experience.

Vita will likely raise a Series B in 2025, she says.

How it works: The New Haven, Connecticut-based telehealth provider partners with providers, payers, and schools to offer services for conditions including suicidality, depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and trauma.

It employs and trains its licensed clinicians in suicide-specific care and treatment, per Hamilton.

Vita's three-month suicide intervention program — based on published research conducted by co-founders — aims to help patients reframe their thoughts around suicide and identify de-escalation tactics, such as turning to what Vita calls a "caring contact" or trusted adult in a moment of crisis.

Zoom in: In a randomized controlled trial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry in 2019, researchers including Vita adviser Cheryl King concluded that the use of a caring contact appeared to help reduce future suicides in youths hospitalized following suicide attempts.

The company uses several recognized clinical scales to assess patients' suicide risk, including the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale and the Suicide Cognitions Scale.

Flashback: Before founding Vita, Hamilton was the chief commercial officer at telemental health company Talkspace (Nasdaq: TALK), where she helped the then-DTC-only company build out its enterprise business.

The experience "helped me construct novel approaches to reimbursement for asynchronous telemental health," Hamilton recalls.

What they're saying: "There's almost no one I talk to that doesn't have some connection [to suicide], whether it's a second cousin or an immediate family member," says Hamilton.

"There's a clinical proven approach to reducing suicide that's not adopted broadly, so we set out to do that using tech."

State of play: Several virtual behavioral health companies such as Talkspace have attracted market and investor attention in recent years.

Virtual trauma therapy provider Nema Health last fall collected $4.1 million in seed funding.

Author Health last summer booked $115 million to support Medicare Advantage users with various forms of serious mental illness (SMI).

Telemental health startup UpLift last fall acquired women-focused online psychiatry provider Minded in an all-stock deal.

Exclusive: Vita Health gets $23M Series A for suicide intervention

Suicide remains a tragic and thorny problem that few startups are thoroughly tackling.

Illustration of a hand reaching out darkness towards a hand in a white lab coat reaching out of a computer

Health tech deals

Suicide intervention startup Vita Health raised $22.5 million in Series A funds, CEO Lynn Hamilton tells Axios exclusively.Why it matters: As the mental health epidemic rages on, <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="suicide" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2023/11/29/suicide-deaths-rates-record-high-2022-cdc" data-vars-content-id="7cd9b062-7176-437d-bed3-56a77f7d55aa" data-vars-headline="Exclusive: Vita Health gets $23M Series A for suicide intervention" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2023/11/29/suicide-deaths-rates-record-high-2022-cdc" target="_self">suicide</a> remains a tragic and thorny problem that few startups are thoroughly tackling.

Exclusive: Vita Health gets $23M Series A for suicide intervention

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