Skip to main content

Please wait while loading...

loader

Contributing experts: Corbin Petro and Hossam Mahmoud, MD

Behavioral health conditions are on the rise, and the challenges they pose are significant. Reduced stigma, growing state and federal support, and advances in evidence-based treatment have increased demand for services. Research continues to show the interplay of behavioral and physical health. For example, the impact of chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension can have a major impact on people's mental health and chronic mental health conditions like depression and anxiety can have a major impact on physical health.

People with serious mental illnesses are 53% more likely to have a cardiovascular disease than those without them — and 85% more likely to die from that disease.

Meeting a person’s mental health and substance use disorder needs is essential to improving their overall health — and it’s the reason that Carelon Behavioral Health is such an important part of the Carelon portfolio. Its strategic partnerships, innovative technologies, and data-driven solutions make it easier for care providers to manage behavioral health concerns in primary care settings, eliminating care silos while improving patient outcomes and easing administrative burdens. 

Advancing the Conversation

One thing I've greatly appreciated is our collaborations focused on developing and tracking quality metrics. Our approach has been about more than just getting members into care. It's about providing the best possible treatment and also ensuring a holistic approach to care.

Nikole Benders-Hadi, MD,

Chief Medical Officer, Talkspace

Supporting Crisis Services

States are required to have call systems in place to help people with urgent behavioral health crises. We recently launched our Crisis Safety Platform to make it easier and more affordable for states to build and maintain those crisis systems. This proprietary technology, with its mobile dispatch and closed-loop referral capabilities, allows for data capture and line-of-sight across a state’s entire crisis system, driving operational efficiency and outcome improvements. 

After helping a person in crisis, the platform makes it possible for a follow-up appointment to be scheduled on the spot, then tracks and reports whether that appointment is kept.

In addition to supporting people experiencing a mental health crisis and preventing suicides, this work helps connect people to other behavioral health resources, reducing the burden for the hospitals and first responders who most frequently help people in crisis.

The Crisis Safety Platform helps nine states — Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Washington, and Nevada — with their crisis response systems and the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Several more states have expressed interest in adopting the technology in the future.2

Our platform has the potential to advance how behavioral health care is accessed and managed more broadly, while improving how we connect people to community resources at the very time it is most needed.

Addressing Substance Use Disorder

Data-driven solutions and treatment models are important tools for reducing substance use disorder (SUD), which affects 16.5% of people ages 12 and older.

Our Resilience Through Information, Support and Education (RISE) program identifies people at the highest risk of misusing alcohol, opioids, stimulants, and sedatives, then engages those individuals using case managers and peer-support specialists. The support staff then provides care coordination and coaching to people in need to support their physical and behavioral health.

Through this enhanced care management model, we connect people to the right resources at the right time, which has led to fewer overdoses, inpatient admissions, and emergency room visits for the thousands of individuals enrolled in the program.3

8,000+

Since its launch in 2019, more than 8,000 individuals and care providers have been enrolled in the RISE program.4

37%

Fewer avoidable inpatient admissions for people diagnosed with SUD.3

Related Stories

1 Carelon internal reporting, 2024.
2 Carelon internal reporting, 2024.
3 Internal program evaluation, June 2023.
4 Carelon Behavioral Health analysis, January 2025.