Each week brings new conversations about mental health, technology, and care. Between Sessions gathers what's worth your attention - so you can stay informed without adding to your workload.
📋 Field Update
Handspring Health, a virtual therapy provider for ages 8 to 29, raised a $19 million Series B this week, bringing its total funding to $37 million to launch a "Complex Care" program for clients whose symptoms escalate but don't need inpatient or ED-level care.
👉 Why it matters: This signals growing investor interest in the gap between weekly therapy and crisis-level care - useful context for referral relationships with clients whose needs are escalating.
🔒 Regulation & Compliance
Faces & Voices of Recovery, a recovery advocacy group, reports CMS's Medicaid rulemaking could cap payments for all Medicaid services, not just four, and narrow the "medically frail" exemption so SUD or mental illness alone won't qualify. The rule isn't final; the group opposes it.
👉 Why it matters: If you serve Medicaid clients with SUD or serious mental illness, watch this closely: it could squeeze reimbursement further and affect some clients' coverage status.
🧠 Clinical Update
A new review in npj Digital Public Health, led by John Torous, tries to settle how many people use AI for mental health support: surveys range from 3% to 70%, landing on a weighted estimate of 27%, with 40% open to it.
👉 Why it matters: The wide range shows inconsistent definitions across surveys - a good reason to ask clients directly about their chatbot habits rather than trust one headline number.
🧩 AI & Mental Health
Rhode Island signed two bills into law last month: one requires chatbots to detect suicidal or self-harm expressions and refer users to crisis services, and the other requires informed consent for AI-assisted therapy and keeps treatment decisions with licensed professionals.
👉 Why it matters: Rhode Island joins states drawing a firm line between AI for admin support and AI in clinical decisions - worth checking your own tools against.
💬 In the Room
A new multi-country study of 2.6 million hospital admissions found sustained heat waves are linked to more hospitalizations for mental and behavioral disorders, with risk highest among older adults.
👉 Why it matters: With heat waves ongoing, check in with prescribers about clients on antipsychotics, lithium, or anticholinergics - these can impair the body's ability to regulate heat.
🏥 Practice & Business
Providence's telepsychiatry program connects psychiatrists and social workers to patients across 42 hospitals in six states, logging a median 2-minute response time in 2025 - down from waits that once stretched up to a week in rural ERs.
👉 Why it matters: A real-world model of team-based virtual care working at scale - and proof patients often adapt to virtual visits faster than clinicians expect.
📖 One Good Read
In a KevinMD essay, North Carolina psychiatrist Ryan Kaufman describes a professionalism complaint over a tense discharge-planning call - the board took no action but told him to reflect on his "tone." He ties it to medicine's shift toward treating patients as "consumers."
🫐 From Berries This Week
This week, Berries talks estate planning: Kym Tolson and lawyer David Rosati, co-founder of Succession Wills, cover why wills take so long to finish, the emotional barriers that keep people stuck, and why practice owners put it off most. Thirty-four minutes.
🤝 Closing
Whether it's a proposed rule, a new dataset, or one colleague's hard week with a licensing board, all of it points back to the same thing: the people doing this work deserve better systems around them.
As always, thank you for your truly important work.
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This newsletter is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute clinical, legal, or regulatory guidance. Clinicians should rely on their professional judgment and applicable standards of care when integrating any technology into practice.