Lyra Health Partners with Starbucks to Provide Mental Health Benefits to Employees

Mental health benefits manager Lyra Health will provide all Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) employees and eligible family members with up to 20 sessions per year with therapists and coaches starting April 6.

The Seattle-based coffee giant announced the move Monday. All sessions will be free of charge to users.

Burlingame, California-based Lyra provides similar services to a bevy of other big-name corporate partners, such as Uber (NYSE: UBER), eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY), Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN) and others. The company covers more than one million U.S. employees and dependents and has contracts with thousands of behavioral health providers from across the country to make it possible.

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Lyra pays providers to offer their services to Lyra members, who are matched with the best provider through online “intelligent matching technology.” The process allows employees to find from a provider who has availability and is particularly suited to address their specific needs.

Starbucks employees and eligible family members will be able to use Lyra’s digital platform to instantly book an appointment with a therapist or mental health coach and have a session either by video or in person.

In a statement, Starbucks said that they chose to roll out the new service in response to feedback from employees following the launch of an initiative called Mental Health Matters last September. The initiative was created with the goal of getting the workforce in touch with mental health resources.

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“We listened to our partners in order to understand what they really need and would really use,” said Ron Crawford, vice president of global benefits at Starbucks, in a press release announcing the news. “What we’ve created in partnership with Lyra Health directly addresses the feedback we’ve heard.”

“With Lyra Health, Starbucks has set the stage for a new era of innovative, comprehensive mental health benefits – an era where more employers are prioritizing their people’s well-being, and breaking down the barriers of mental health stigma that still exist today,” David Ebersman, founder and CEO of Lyra Health said in the press release.

Lyra last week announced that it raised $75 million in Series C funding, bringing its total amount raised thus far to about $175 million, according to Crunchbase. The news capped a week that began with Lyra being named the fourth most innovative health company for FastCompany’s list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2020.

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