LifeSpeak raises $42M funding for Digital Mental Health

LifeSpeak Inc. announced today a $42 million growth equity investment from Round13 Growth Fund, Kensington Capital partners and Roynat Capital to expand its digital education platform for employee mental health and wellness. 

LifeSpeak’s SaaS platform is comprised of a library containing more than 2,000 video training sessions, podcasts, guided recommendations, and other unique proprietary content curated to industry and company sectors. The remote platform is offered to employees and their health plan members to address preventative health concerns, mental health (including anxiety, depression, addiction, isolation, suicide, etc.), marital and relationship advice, as well as parenting and eldercare. 

Since its founding in 2004, LifeSpeak has expanded its platform across 25 industries to include a wide range of private and public institutional users across North America. 

Demand for remote telehealth solutions have been on the rise, driven further since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health concerns have been exacerbated due to prolonged periods of lockdown and isolation, poor physical health, and general uncertainty. A CDC survey conducted in late June found that 41% of adults in the United States reported an “adverse mental or behavioural health condition.” This is a marked rise from the year before. Data from June 2020 shows that the number of American suffering from anxiety disorder has tripled since the same time the year before, and those suffering from depression has increased fourfold.

What’s even more concerning is that 10% of CDC survey respondents stated they started or increased their use of alcohol or illicit drugs during the pandemic, as a coping response.

The need for mental health consultations is paramount to ensuring not only the wellbeing of individuals but of companies themselves. As companies have scaled to fully remote workforces, they cannot expect to perform at high calibre if their employees’ mental health is not being cared for. This is where LifeSpeak steps in.

“The current health crisis has highlighted the difficulty organizations face in addressing the needs of the anxious, remote workforce,” said Michael Held, Founder and CEO of LifeSpeak. “We’re excited to partner with our new investors to dramatically expand access to LifeSpeak’s platform across health plans and employers. Addressing depression, anxiety, addiction, and other health issues enhances employee well-being and strengthens corporate culture and productivity. Building resilience enables companies to support employees in the face of everyday stress, as well as equipping them to better handle an acute crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic.”