New York City-based Minded Inc. secured $25 million in seed funding to help it expand the geographic reach and impact of its telepsychiatry and medication management platform.

Minded plans to expand into more states in the U.S. as well as add mood, attention-deficit treatments and psychedelic treatments to its offerings; and offer genetic testing for more accurate prescribing.

The digital mental health company currently offers free online assessments, video chats with board-certified psychiatrists or psychiatric nurse practitioners and either has prescriptions filled at local pharmacies or delivered to patients’ homes. 

Minded is available in California, Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Texas, according to the company’s website.

“Minded is on a mission to make it easy for millions of people to be just a few days and a Zoom call away from speaking with a caring, compassionate expert,” David Ronick, co-founder and CEO of Minded, said in a press release.

Founded in 2021, the investors in the seed round include Streamlined Ventures, Link Ventures, The Tiger Fund, Unicorn Ventures, Trousdale Ventures, Gaingels, SALT Fund, TheFund. Other investors include the founders of Care.com, Bolt, Gravity Blanket, RXBAR, and Gilt.com.

The funding round also includes venture debt from WTI, according to the release. 

Minded is attempting to increase access to mental health medications at a time of remarkable imbalance between high demand for behavioral health services and low access to providers. During the peak of the pandemic, rates of anxiety tripled and rates of depression quadrupled in the U.S., according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Americans are facing a mental health crisis, and the supply of psychiatric care isn’t keeping up with the rising demand,” Ullas Naik, founder of Streamlined Ventures, said in the release. “Minded utilizes advanced technology to forge real human connections between people in need and the experts who can help them, in a way that can have a positive impact at scale.”

Minded’s big-dollar seed round may be indicative of investors’ confidence in consumer demand and regulatory flexibility for digital mental health companies to provide psychiatry and prescribe medications via the internet. 

In December, Cerebral Health landed $300 million in Series C funding and hit a nearly $5 billion valuation to provide similar services. Ophelia Health, a virtual medication-assisted therapy provider for opioid use disorder, landed $50 million in a Series B funding round, also announced in December.

Companies that seek to better connect people to behavioral health-related medications are making the most of the exemptions to the Ryan Haight Act that were created during the federal public health emergency. The act, in part, limits the ability of providers to prescribe controlled substances via telemedicine without a prior in-person exam. That exemption specifically was lifted to allow better use of telehealth as a pandemic mitigation measure.

Minded doesn’t presently prescribe medications for ADHD but can prescribe medications like Xanax, Ativan, Ambien and Lunesta because of the public health emergency exemption, according to the company’s website. 

Movement in Congress around a bipartisan mental health bill may materialize in the summer and may have space to address reforms to the Ryan Haight Act. The Biden administration has previously stated that changes to how the nation handles telehealth and behavioral health included reforms to the act.