Rising incidence rates for mental illnesses on college campuses led a Grand Rapids-based telehealth company that offers online mental health assessments to pursue a new focus designed to help students get screened and access treatment.
Through an initiative that launched in 2023 and has grown steadily, Mentavi Health LLC has partnered with 55 college and universities, including the University of Michigan, that combined enroll 1.5 million students.
In the partnership, Mentavi offers students clinical assessments that screen and diagnoses for depression and anxiety. The “Smart Assessment” also flags other mental health conditions such as bipolar disorder for a follow-up screening.
Mentavi Health has been “talking with colleges every week at this point and adding new colleges almost every week,” and aims to accelerate the initiative in 2024, said Tim Gutwald, the firm’s vice president of business outreach.
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College health centers that are often stretched for resources can refer students to Mentavi Health for an immediate online assessment, which costs $179. Some colleges will assist students in paying for the assessment, Gutwald said.
The initiative follows a push by Mentavi Health to transition to working more with traditional health care providers, rather than directly targeting consumers, he said.
“It’s something where we’ve seen progressive uptake and momentum, and we’re looking to continue that in 2024,” Gutwald said. “We can quickly and effectively assess students for the presence of mental health conditions such as ADHD, anxiety and depression so that the patients can get treatment they need and can succeed at their school.”
Mentavi Health also wants to appeal directly to employers to offer the virtual assessment to employees at a discounted price. The company recently signed a Grand Rapids restaurant operator for the service, Gutwald said.
Founders launched Mentavi Health in 2018 as ADHD Online LLC to offer online assessments for children who may have Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Patients come to Mentavi Health through referrals from primary care physicians. Mentavi Health has since expanded the platform to screen for other conditions beyond ADHD.
The results from online assessments are reviewed by licensed psychologists for a diagnosis and, if needed, a referral for treatment. Patients can either seek treatment through an ADHD Online licensed clinician, the campus health clinic or on their own.
The idea behind ADHD Online was to eliminate the long waits of weeks or months that it typically takes to get an appointment with a psychologist.
In partnering with student health clinics on college campuses, Mentavi Health targets a large and growing need across the country.
In web surveys involving 96,000 U.S. students at 133 campuses in the 2021-22 academic year, 44% reported symptoms of depression and 37% reported anxiety disorders. Among respondents, 15% said they had seriously considered suicide in the past year.
Those are the highest recorded rates in the history of the 15-year-old Healthy Minds survey. In Michigan, the survey included students from Grand Rapids Community College, Ferris State University, Western Michigan University and Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, and Wayne State University.
Mentavi Health offers the online mental health assessment for a generation of college students today who are long accustomed to doing so much online, having grown up with the technology as part of their daily lives, and welcome telemedicine.
“College students certainly comfortable using telehealth and comfortable using technology to access health care,” Gutwald said. “People certainly appreciate kind of the privacy and confidentiality that telemedicine offers even more so than the standard health care.”
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