The U.S. Navy has tapped Headspace to provide active duty military personnel with access to app-based mental health coaching.
Through the partnership with Headspace, 25,000 active duty sailors and their families will have unlimited access to confidential one-on-one mental health coaching available 24/7, care navigation and Headspaceʼs library of well-being content at no cost.
The digital mental health company will provide those Navy service members and their families access to mental health support to help address everyday stress and relationship issues as well as the added stress of deployments and military service.
"The Navy has historically tried to build some of their own capabilities in this area, and, what they've realized is, that it's really hard to get adoption with some of these homegrown solutions," Tom Pickett, Headspace CEO, said in an exclusive interview about the new partnership.
The U.S. Navy recognized there are commercial solutions on the market that are accessible, proven and evidence-backed, and "consumers are adopting them," Pickett said.
When it comes to mental health, many people don’t know where to start or what type of care is right for them. When therapy is the only option, mental health is often treated as a last resort and addressed only in moments of crisis, Pickett noted.
Headspace offers a broader approach to mental health with evidence-based meditation and mindfulness tools, mental health coaching, therapy and psychiatry,
"The solutions today in the market are really heavily reliant on therapy. The reality is that not everybody needs a therapist," Pickett said. "Some people do, and it's really important that you get them to the right clinical care. But what I've found is that most people are actually looking for ways to cope with different stress or anxiety. They need to build resilience."
Pickett came onboard at Headspace about seven months ago. Prior to that, he was chief revenue officer at DoorDash and CEO of digital media company Ellation (now Crunchyroll). He also spent a decade at Google in various executive positions and served as vice president of content and operations at YouTube.
As a former F/A-18 fighter pilot, Pickett understands the stress that many active duty service members experience and the stigma that comes from seeking mental health support.
"Twenty-plus years ago, we didn't talk about mental health, it wasn't a thing that was really discussed. Flash forward to where we are today, there are just a number of growing mental health challenges," he said.
The need among this community is tremendous, Pickett said, and Headspace is uniquely positioned to support them given its virtual-first model and proven outcomes.
"Just like physical training strengthens the body, practicing ‘mental pushups’—whether it’s meditating regularly, texting with a coach when you’re feeling lonely or building healthy sleep routines—can strengthen the mind over time and have a powerful impact on overall well-being and resilience," Pickett said.
Mental health disorders were the top reason active duty U.S. military personnel were hospitalized in 2023, a recent report from the Defense Health Agency found. The U.S. Navy's partnership with Headspace aims to get in front of these trends by making it easy to provide mental health and well-being support for sailors and their families from the privacy of their phones, according to the company.
Eligible sailors and their family members ages 13 and up can now access the Navy’s Headspace benefit and seek various types of on-demand support to meet their unique needs, including guided exercises and well-being content and video or text-based mental health coaching.
When needed, Headspace also offers care navigation and triage support to additional types of care or Department of Defense resources based on co-created protocols by the U.S. Navy and Headspace.
The pilot program includes service members and their families at three U.S. naval bases: Naval Submarine Base New London; Puget Sound Naval Shipyard/Naval Base Kitsap; and Naval Air Station Lemoore.
“The people of our Navy remain our most precious resource. From deployments and training to family emergencies, finances, and friendships, significant events can have significant impacts on our Sailors and loved ones. To ensure our warfighting excellence and be mission ready, all Sailors need to be healthy physically, mentally, and emotionally,” said Captain Kenneth M. Curtin Jr., commanding officer of Naval Submarine Base New London, one of the three Navy pilot sites for the partnership.
The Headspace program underscores the Navy’s commitment to healthy behaviors and the strengthening of mind, body and spirit, Curtin said. "Navy leadership has said it simply: mental health is health! Headspace and its app can assist us with adapting and growing in the face of significant events, and ensuring we are never out of the fight," he said in a statement.
Launching therapy services for consumers and exploring the use of AI
Headspace merged with Ginger in a $3 billion deal in the fall of 2021 and offers meditation and mindfulness services along with on-demand coaching, therapy and psychiatry services. The company now works with more than 4,000 employers across 200 countries.
The Headspace app offers personalized mental health tools including guided meditations, sleepcasts, mindful movement and mental health coaching through video and chat. Headspace's enterprise offerings, available to employers and health plans, include prevention, subclinical mental health coaching, clinical care, care navigation and an expanded employee assistance replacement solution.
Last year, Headspace launched direct-to-consumer text-based mental health coaching, and the company plans to slowly roll out clinical therapy services to consumers this year. "We're going to be launching insurance-backed care for consumers for the first time," Pickett said.
The company also has been exploring the use of artificial intelligence to enhance its mental health services. Last year, it launched an empathetic AI companion called "Ebb" integrated into its app. Ebb is a conversational AI tool trained in motivational interviewing and is designed to provide instant, personalized support.
More than 1 million messages have been exchanged with Ebb since it launched, the company said. Regular Ebb usage has shown to drive 34% more app engagement and content utilization with Headspace consumer members , who mostly talk with Ebb about relationships and social challenges, work frustrations and careers, sleep and rest, boundaries and self-care and family.
Ebb guides users through self-reflection by way of gratitude exercises and interactive journaling, Pickett said.
"I'm a big believer that, that we really transform the user experience on Headspace with more conversational AI," he said.
With traditional user interfaces through mental health apps, it's difficult to glean what users are looking for, he noted. "People generally just try to poke around and see if they can find what they're looking for," he said.
The use of conversational AI can improve the "front door" experience for users. "This idea of constant triage, understanding where the person is in the moment, is going to be really powerful to allow us to then come up with a customized set of solutions for them," he said.
Headspace is "moving aggressively" into investments to "redefine the product experience," Pickett said. The company aims to use technology to make the user experience more interactive, personalized and engaging, he noted. "I think that's a powerful transition that is now possible that was impossible in the years past."
Just two weeks ago, Headspace quietly acquired a company called Supertalk AI that is developing an AI companion for mental health.
"We are looking to double down on our engineering efforts to really push further and further in this vector. It's important that Headspace is a trusted brand in mental health. With what we launched today, there are a ton of guardrails around the edges. We've launched very contained, safe experiences, and we'll be very cautious as we roll it out, but we think there's just a tremendous amount of opportunity for us to continue to invest there," he told Fierce Healthcare.
Last year, Headspace made major organizational changes to invest in new capabilities and care models. Behavioral Health Business reported that the company laid off 13% of its workforce and transitioned its staff therapists to a “flex network” of contractors and part-time roles.
"We did make some changes. We did make some some cuts to make sure that we could actually reinvest back into the product," Pickett said. "We also wanted to expand our provider network."
Employers want increased access to therapy through a larger therapy network with a higher level of provider choice. "They want to see more choice from a clinician perspective, and it's really hard to do that if you only have a fixed network of providers," Pickett said.
Headspace has been augmenting its therapist network with contractors as it adjusts its provider network.
"That built our confidence that we can do this at the same level of quality that we have been getting with our full-time staff therapists. You'll see us continue to expand our network. We're actually retaining the majority of our providers so far in this transition as we are trying to meet the market need," he said.