Los Angeles and Monterey Counties will be the first to launch the next-generation comprehensive online mental health screening application to provide better access to care for residents and optimize provider availability for treatment.

Berkeley, Calif. (October 30, 2021) Help@Hand, a project supported by California Mental Health Services Authority (CalMHSA), aims to build a complementary support system that offers a bridge to care, helps identify early signs of mental health challenges, offers timely support, removes barriers, and seeks to include new avenues of care for communities not connected to conventional county services.

The agency recently selected CredibleMind to build, validate, and evaluate a comprehensive online mental health screening application with referrals to county mental and behavioral health services. Residents will have free access to state-of-the-art mental health risk screening and streamlined access to county behavioral health services. Providers will be better paired with clients and enjoy a more efficient intake process.

The application will be available via smartphone, tablet, or desktop and designed to be easily accessible for everyone in the community.

“We have recognized that in order to offer timely support to our constituents we needed to seek new avenues of care for those not connected to conventional county services,” said Amie Miller, Executive Director of CalMHSA “With the growing shortages of mental health professionals, CredibleMind is helping us to improve access for behavioral services, efficiently deliver information to providers,” she added.

CredibleMind brings together experts in public health, psychology, psychiatry, technology development, and user design.

“The key to being effective is to cut through the chaos associated with seeking mental health support,” said Deryk Van Brunt, CEO of CredibleMind and Clinical Professor at UC Berkeley School of Public Health. “Our team has experience helping counties fill in gaps related to mental health services. Not only do we have the clinical expertise, but also we have the technology expertise and are confident we can build a screening application that can accurately screen for the most common conditions seen in the county,” he added.

Help@Hand and CredibleMind will launch the online screening application in September 2022, starting with Monterey County Behavioral Health and the Los Angeles County (the nation’s most populous) Department of Mental Health.

Contact: Scott Dahl, Senior Director, CredibleMind | 404.721.5964 | scott@crediblemind.com

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About Help@Hand from CalMHSA

Help@Hand is being administered by CalMHSA on behalf of participating member counties. This is a five-year demonstration project funded and directed by counties. Help@Hand aims to understand how digital therapeutics fits within the public mental health system of care. Through the utilization of multi form-factor devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops, as a mode of connection and treatment to reach people who are likely to go either unserved or underserved by traditional mental health care, project services will focus on prevention, early intervention, family and social support to decrease the need for a psychiatric hospital and emergency care service.

About CredibleMind

The organization’s mission is to help people flourish by optimizing their mental health, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth. A majority of adults in the U.S. have a mental or emotional health challenge and want assistance. However, only a small fraction receive professional services. While 75 percent turn to self-care first, CredibleMind uniquely provides users with evidence-based self-help approaches and helps them find the most appropriate resources and interventions in a friendly, familiar, and accessible form.

The CredibleMind platform enables payers, public health departments, employers, insurers, healthcare providers, and community organizations with a comprehensive upstream population-based mental health ecosystem, complete with local customization, engagement tools, and analytics reporting on needs, use, and outcomes. For more information visit crediblemind.com.