Nir Eyal

If Compass Pathways gets COMP360 approved for TRD by the end of 2026, most headlines will focus on clinics, psychiatrists, and stock prices. But many folks are missing one critical element: This approval wouldn’t just validate synthetic psilocybin as a treatment. It would also force a rescheduling conversation... And that may be the much bigger lever at a societal level. Once the FDA approves psilocybin for TRD, the DEA is legally compelled to move it off Schedule I. That single step reboots U.S. drug policy: state autonomy increases, research costs collapse, banking restrictions loosen, and whole categories of work that were previously “underground” or legally ambiguous begin to surface. Here’s why this matters if you’re considering a career in the psychedelic space: • Demand will outpace access. Even if COMP360 is approved, it’s far from guaranteed that insurance will cover six-hour psychedelic sessions at scale. Approval without accessibility will continue driving people outside traditional medical systems in search of preparation, integration, and ongoing support. • The work won’t end at symptom relief. Psilocybin opens a critical learning window. What happens in the 2–3 weeks after the experience — lifestyle changes, relational shifts, nervous system regulation, metabolic health — will largely determine whether outcomes last. Most medical practitioners are not trained in the overlap of physiological well-being and mental health. This is a HUGE gap. • New roles will emerge fast. Education, integration, coaching, facilitation, research, and community-based support aren’t “adjacent” to the clinical model, they’re essential complements to it. The ecosystem will need people who can bridge physiology, psychology, and lived context, not just administer a protocol. • This is bigger than individual healing. Psychedelics reorganize how people relate to their lives, their bodies, and one another. If we lose that relational and systemic lens, we’ll miss the real promise of this moment. COMP360 approval would be a medical milestone, one nearly 50 years in the making. But for those REALLY paying attention, it’s also a career signal. A signal that the next phase of this work will be built not only in clinics... But in the spaces that help people turn insight into lasting change. If you’re feeling the pull to step into this field, this may be one of those rare windows where preparation meets timing. And timing matters. Our next cohort for our flagship practitioner training via Psychedelic Coaching Institute kicks off on February 20th. If you want to be at the cutting-edge of this third wave of psychedelics, there is no better time than now to make that happen. Details about the next cohort in the comments below 👇

135

31 Comments

Many of us are turning to AI to treat loneliness — with tools that may be making us lonelier. That’s the paradox at the heart of today’s mental health tech. On one hand, AI companions and therapy chatbots are surging in popularity. Some, like the clinically validated Therabot from Michael Heinz at Dartmouth College, show real promise in supporting people when human care isn’t available. But a recent study from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and OpenAI reveals a troubling side effect: people who spend more time with ChatGPT report higher levels of loneliness. What starts as comfort can quietly displace the real-world relationships we depend on for well-being. The very tools marketed as the cure may be deepening the condition. So how do we design AI for healing, not harm? We can start by building chatbots that don’t lure us into endless loops of conversation or content — that offer support when needed, then step back. Tools that prevent overuse instead of encouraging it. That promote healthy behaviors rather than replacing them. And most importantly, we can design AI to enhance human care. That’s the philosophy behind Alison Cerezo’s work at mpathic. As SVP of Research, they’re advancing a model of AI-powered precision medicine to help therapists deliver more accurate, personalized, empathic care. mpathic’s tool acts as a co-therapist: analyzing tone, content, and conversational nuance — from synchrony to therapeutic alliance — to support clinicians in their approach to each patient. AI can expand access, reduce burnout, and improve outcomes — but only if we design it to strengthen the human connection. We unpack this tension — and what responsible AI in mental health really looks like — in our latest episode of the Behavioral Design podcast from Nuance Behavior (with Alison Cerezo, Samuel Salzer & myself). Listen in!

58

21 Comments

AI Therapy for Sexual Trauma Recovery: A Double-Edged Sword? Link In Bio. The rise of AI in mental health care is accelerating—but when it comes to sexual trauma recovery, we’re entering complex, uncharted territory. AI-powered therapy bots, voice-guided CBT tools, and emotion-sensing apps are being hailed as scalable solutions for trauma support. They offer anonymity, accessibility, and 24/7 presence—critical for survivors navigating shame, hypervigilance, or dissociation. But here’s the tension: Can a bot hold space for embodied pain? Can algorithms replicate the nuanced trust required for post-traumatic healing? What happens when intimate data is harvested from survivors at their most vulnerable moments? Studies from 2024 show a promising 43% decrease in acute anxiety symptoms when survivors used AI-based journaling and breathwork tools. Yet clinicians caution: without ethical frameworks and trauma-informed coding, wellness tech can unintentionally re-trigger or dehumanize. At V For Vibes, we’re watching this evolution with both optimism and care. We support innovation—but we advocate for trauma-aware design, survivor agency, and privacy-first architecture. AI in sexual trauma recovery is not just a tool—it’s a responsibility. The question is no longer can we build it. It’s: Should we—and how? #SexTech #TraumaRecovery #DigitalTherapy #MentalHealthAI #VForVibes #AIandEthics #FemTech #TherapyTools #SexualWellness #HumanCenteredDesign #LinkedInLeadership #sexualhealth

454

40 Comments

Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Meets ACT: What Clinicians and Researchers Need to Know Fascinating conversation with Stephen C. Hayes on how Acceptance and Commitment Therapy can enhance psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy outcomes. Thank you Jules Evans for hosting Steven C. Hayes for brief webinar today (thank AI for summary). The Core Insight: Psychedelics work by increasing psychological flexibility—our ability to be present, hold thoughts lightly, and act on our values. ACT provides the framework to prepare clients, navigate challenging experiences, and integrate insights into lasting change. Key Takeaways for Practitioners: 🔹 Therapist role shifts across phases: ∙ Preparation: Directive, skills-building ∙ Dosing: Supportive presence, minimal intervention ∙ Integration: Directive again, translating experience into action 🔹 Managing difficult experiences: Use ACT tools like present-moment grounding, normalizing emotions, and “self as context” to help clients observe rather than be overwhelmed by challenging content. 🔹 Context is everything: Set, setting, social support, and therapeutic structure aren’t optional—they’re essential safety factors that determine outcomes. For Researchers: Hayes advocates moving beyond group averages toward: ∙ High-density, longitudinal tracking of individuals ∙ Process-based measures (what mechanisms drive change?) ∙ Idiographic research designs that respect individual differences The Warning: We must learn from history. Both past demonization AND careless use caused harm. Avoid rigid protocols or commercial pressures that ignore the social, contextual nature of healing. Bottom line: Psychedelic therapy isn’t magic—it works through identifiable psychological processes. ACT helps us understand those processes, personalize interventions, and maximize benefit while minimizing risk. What’s your experience integrating process-based approaches with emerging psychedelic therapies? #PsychedelicTherapy #ACT #MentalHealth #ClinicalPsychology #TherapyInnovation #BehavioralScience

30

America’s leading ADHD telehealth startup Done Global (now Mindful) has now become a federal criminal case. A jury has convicted its founder and CEO Ruthia He, and its clinical president Dr. David Brody, for illegally distributing Adderall and defrauding insurers. Here’s how a fast-growing healthtech startup crossed the line 👇 ▶︎ 1. The promise of easy ADHD help Done provided telehealth for ADHD patients at scale. 40M stimulant pills were prescribed, generating $100M+ in revenue. But it made it easy for people to get false ADHD diagnoses for the wrong reasons. ▶︎ 2. Shortcuts replaced medical judgment Evaluations were half the length of a proper psychiatric exam. Nurses were paid $60K/month to refill prescriptions without real check-ins. Some patients received Adderall for years based only on automated emails. ▶︎ 3. Targeting the wrong groups on purpose Done spent $40M+ on ads - targeting even people seeking Adderall who were not ADHD patients. This was a deliberate, shady customer acquisition strategy. ▶︎ 4. Throwing insurance fraud in the mix Despite all this, the company told insurers it followed proper ADHD diagnostic rules. They reported drug tests were done (they weren’t) and claimed safer medications had been tried first (a lie). Those false filings convinced Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers to pay out $14M+. All this came to light after a Wall Street Journal review. The DEA launched an investigation. One patient even died after receiving a Done prescription. And in June 2024, CEO Ruthia He and clinical president Dr. David Brody were arrested. Recently, both were found guilty on multiple conspiracy and drug-distribution counts. They now face up to 20 years in prison. What makes me mad is cases like Done don’t just break laws - they break trust. Every founder building ethical digital care will now face the shadow of this case: more scrutiny, more skepticism, more barriers. How do you think healthtech founders can win back the trust of our audiences? #entrepreneurship #healthtech #startups

226

44 Comments

The question of how to use AI responsibly in mental health is on my mind every day. At Calm, we’ve learned that technology works best in this space when it keeps people, not algorithms, at the center. I believe AI can be a powerful complement to therapy and human care, but it’s no substitute for them. Done right, it can help expand access and support our nation’s care system. Done wrong, it risks real harm. Mental health is already in crisis for too many. We all have a role to play in building a future where tech helps more people thrive. Read more from Maya Goldman on what’s unfolding below 👇 #MentalHealth #AI #Leadership #ResponsibleTech #HumanFirst  https://lnkd.in/gjYThRc3

73

7 Comments

AI + wearables continues to look pretty promising for healthcare, especially chronic disease. New pre-print from Apple from their massive heart-health study provides additional weight behind what we see at Rune Labs with Parkinson's, where our ability to apply AI to dense everyday activity, gait, mobility and physiologic surrogates captured with the Apple Watch and iPhone alongside traditional Parkinson's symptoms like tremor and dyskinesia meaningfully lifts our ability to detect, discriminate, and provide insight: https://lnkd.in/gCCFJ27P For complex, time varying health states (infection, pregnancy, etc) the Apple team are seeing ~0.05 AUROC lift vs single modality (e.g. PPG) - which can be enough to push a diagnostic into a clinically useful category...

115

4 Comments

🚀 Building Phia has never been about doing things the “traditional” way. From day one, Phoebe and I leaned into a digital-first, public-facing, founder-led approach. We share our experiments openly, ask for feedback through DMs, and even hire talent and designers straight from social media. We’ve used AI tools to test creative ideas and scale campaigns, and we’ve treated our journey like an open source project so others can learn alongside us. One of our most powerful growth engines has been our podcast, The Burnouts, which now has nearly 500,000 followers on Instagram and over 100 million views across platforms. What started as a way to share career advice, especially for young women, has become a funnel of energy, talent, and ideas for Phia. With just 12 people on the team today, we’re building toward a vision of the future of personalized shopping. This is only the beginning. There’s so much more we want to learn, build, and share. And we want to do it publicly so that our community can grow alongside us.

157

12 Comments

The race for the “𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡 𝐎𝐒” is on. Diagnostics, wearables, and AI are no longer separate — they’re converging fast. Entire ecosystems are racing to become the operating system for human health. What’s changed? ⚡ Labs → Apps 100+ biomarker panels, full-body scans, and clinician summaries are moving from boutique clinics into mainstream memberships. ⌚ Wearables → Ecosystems Wearable makers now connect 24/7 vitals with metabolic health, lab diagnostics, environmental signals, and more. 💪 Fitness → Healthspan Performance brands are pivoting into recovery, longevity, and whole-person wellness — not just workouts. 💻 Big Tech → Plumbing Apple, Google, Samsung Healthcare building the rails for interoperability, records & data liquidity. Who’s playing? 🧬 Diagnostics-led OS Function Health, Superpower etc. — bringing 50–100+ labs, MRI, and biomarker panels into memberships. ⌚ Wearable-led OS ŌURA, WHOOP, Ultrahuman, Withings etc. Expanding from signals to ecosystems. 💪 Fitness → Healthspan OS Peloton Interactive, Equinox, EGYM etc. — moving from workouts to recovery, longevity, and holistic wellness. 🥑 Nutrition & Metabolic OS Levels, Nutrisense, Dexcom etc — moving beyond glucose spikes and food logging toward metabolic coaching, personalized nutrition and holistic health. 💻 Platform Layers Apple Health, Google Health Connect, Samsung Health — owning the rails positioning themselves as infrastructure. What’s missing? One word: Context. Right now, most “Health OS” attempts are still islands. All handed back as dashboards. Useful? Sure. Somehow. But it still leaves the human to connect the dots The winners won’t have just more data They’ll deliver more meaning & intelligence The winning stack will look like this: 🧠 Contextualized intelligence → signals translated into why this matters today 🔁 Interoperability by default → device, app, and lab-agnostic 🎯 Last-mile coaching → real-time, hyper-personalized guidance 👥 Human-in-the-loop → empower health professionals, coaches & care teams with the same intelligence users see 🔒 Trust stack → privacy by design, on-device where possible, transparent rights 📱 Frictionless UX → one interface seamless enough to make every silo obsolete (PS: Curious how this works in practice? Check ONVY HealthTech — built for B2B integrations.) In other words: From tracking → understanding → timely action. Or, to borrow from software: from prompts → context engineering. Where it goes next: 🏠 Ambient health → light, air, noise, temperature, radiation & toxin exposure feed directly into recovery, health metrics, and daily behavior. Your home and environment aren’t background anymore — they become part of your health plan. 🤖 Agentic AI → not just explaining patterns, but handling tasks: scheduling labs, nudging routines, coordinating care. 🌍 Population → Personal → the same layer that helps one user scales to employers, insurers, and communities to actually move outcomes.

190

69 Comments

Most health conferences repeat the same surface-level advice. You hear about longevity. You see supplement brands. You collect business cards. Then you go home with no clear protocol, no clinical insight, and no serious network. Meanwhile, life expectancy gaps widen. Chronic disease starts earlier. Most “anti-aging” talk ignores biomarkers, regenerative medicine, and measurable outcomes. If you care about extending healthspan, vague inspiration is not enough. Hololife Longevity Côte d’Azur 2026 brings together physicians, researchers, founders, and investors focused on practical life extension. Expect evidence-driven sessions on biomarkers, regenerative therapies, metabolic health, and preventive medicine. Expect real conversations with decision-makers. Expect access to people building the future of healthspan. This is not a wellness expo. It is a working forum for those serious about longevity. Join us on the Côte d’Azur: https://lnkd.in/dcNXdEg5

20

1 Comment

From sick care to healthy MAUs: the economics behind the longevity shift 🔗 If you haven’t already, read Julie Yoo’s (Andreessen Horowitz) excellent framing of “Healthy MAUs”, a structural shift in how healthcare value will be created in 2026. 👉 https://lnkd.in/ecyXhj9b I also enjoyed this unpack by Joe Vennare for Fitt Insider of it in The New Economics of Preventative Health. Both point to the same big idea: health isn’t just something we fix. It’s something people should stay engaged with over time. Here’s what I’m taking away and why it matters for the longevity economy: 🧠 1) The unit of value is shifting - from “sick users” to healthy monthly actives (Monthly Active User) Julie outlines how traditional systems optimize around episodic, high-cost care (sick MAUs/DAUs) and ignore the much larger group of people who are not sick but want regular insight into their health status. These “Healthy MAUs” are not future patients - they’re active participants in their own health journey. 📈 2) Prevention can be a business model For too long prevention has been treated as a cost center - reimbursed generously only after something goes wrong. The combination of AI-lowered delivery costs, evolving insurance models, and subscription-friendly value propositions means that prevention can be economically viable - not just aspirational. 📊 3) This is exactly the shift I’ve been writing about in Sick No More (2015) and Epic (released a few months ago) In reactive systems, health outcomes lag, and interventions are costly. In a preventative, longevity-oriented system: • individuals stay engaged long before disease onset • data becomes longitudinal not episodic • healthspan becomes as measurable as lifespan Economically, this expands the addressable market from the sick to the continuously engaged healthy, creating durable revenue streams tied to staying well - not only treating illness. 🔄 4) Real platforms differentiate through continuous engagement What separates tomorrow’s health leaders from today’s incumbents is their ability to: • turn health into ongoing insights, not checkboxes • deliver interventions before escalation • sustain monthly active engagement rooted in actionable data This isn’t just a “#wellness” trend. It’s a structural re-alignment of incentives that will underpin the longevity economy. If we get this right, prevention becomes not just better for people. It becomes the core growth engine of health systems. #LongevityEconomy #Prevention #HealthyMAUs #FutureOfHealth #DigitalHealth #ProactiveCare #HealthTech #Epic

25

1 Comment

In healthtech interviews, clinicians often miss what matters most. Their impact. Many focus on listing the tasks they did… and stop there. Try this instead: ❌ Task-focused: “I reviewed clinical content.” ✅ Impact-focused: “I translated clinical guidelines into product rules + copy, reducing escalations and speeding up approvals.” ❌ Task-focused: “I provided medical input.” ✅ Impact-focused: “I defined decision rules + escalation thresholds so the team could ship with lower clinical risk.” Same work. Different framing. –––– 📌 Keep this as a reminder: outcomes > tasks ♻️ Repost to help a clinician in your network 🙋‍♀️ Follow Dr Alice McGee for weekly healthtech opportunities + practical career frameworks

35

3 Comments

Big news at Covera Health! We've launched Protect Her™, an AI-powered platform designed to close critical gaps in women’s healthcare. It uses routine imaging to detect serious conditions like breast cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis before symptoms appear. Each year, millions of women undergo mammograms, chest CTs, and X-rays. Many subtle but life-threatening signs go unrecognized. Protect Her changes that. ✅ Detects breast arterial calcifications and coronary calcium ✅ Surfaces potential breast malignancies missed on screening mammograms ✅ Flags early evidence of osteoporosis Why this matters: 👉 1 in 5 breast cancers are missed on screening mammograms 👉 Up to 1 in 6 women show early signs of heart disease on routine mammograms yet these go largely unreported and untreated 👉 1 in 2 women over 50 will suffer an osteoporotic fracture-and 1 in 5 who break their hip won’t survive the first year Early detection isn’t optional. It’s everything. These aren’t just statistics—they’re real women. Real lives. My own mom’s lung cancer was found incidentally, during imaging for an unrelated issue. That unexpected discovery gave her a fighting chance and is the reason she is still here today. With Protect Her, we’re working to make that kind of early detection a system—not a stroke of luck. For employers, this is about more than health. It’s about protecting your workforce. Early detection saves lives and reduces high-cost claims. It leads to better outcomes and a healthier, more productive employee population. We’re transforming radiology into a proactive, lifesaving tool -- for women, their families, and the systems that care for them. This work is personal. We all have someone in our life that we want to protect. 👏 Huge credit to our team at Covera---Richard Herzog, M.D., FACR, Richard K.J. Brown, M.D., FACR, Russell Stewart, MD, MBA, MS Brian Hart, Carrie Walecka (she/her), Bilal Khan, Aaron Friedkin, MD, Ben Pugh, Meg Mathison, Tyler Lakin, Timothy Bristow and many others--for bringing this to life. #AI #Radiology #WomensHealth #EarlyDetection #HealthcareInnovation #EmployerHealth https://lnkd.in/ejkYWrCu

229

23 Comments