Amae Health

Amae Health operates as a specialized healthcare provider focused on delivering comprehensive, long-term care for adults with severe mental illness (SMI). The company was founded in 2022 by Stas Sokolin and Sonia Garcia, both of whom have personal experiences with the shortcomings of the mental healthcare system in supporting family members with conditions like bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder. This firsthand knowledge was a primary motivator for creating a new care model.

Sokolin's background includes roles as an impact investor at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and on the founding team of Zing Health, a tech-enabled Medicare Advantage startup. Garcia has an engineering background from Rice and Stanford and previously worked at the family mental health startup Brightline. Their combined experience in finance, healthcare investment, and member experience shapes the company's strategy. The company's name, Amae, is derived from a Japanese term reflecting the desire to depend on others, which underscores their philosophy of building strong support systems.

The business operates physical outpatient clinics designed to be centers for both treatment and community support. Its market is the estimated 14.1 million adults in the U.S. with an SMI, a demographic often faced with fragmented and difficult-to-access care. Amae Health's service is built on a psychiatrist-led, integrated care model inspired by the VA's mental health intensive case management program. This model brings together a multidisciplinary team—including psychiatrists, primary care physicians, therapists, social workers, health coaches, and peer supporters—to address behavioral health, physical health, and social determinants of health in unison. The company provides treatment for conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe mood disorders, and co-occurring substance use disorders.

Revenue is generated through value-based care contracts with a range of payers, including major insurers like Blue Shield of California, Aetna, Cigna, and Anthem, as well as Medicaid plans. This model aligns financial incentives with patient outcomes. The company has established strategic partnerships with major academic healthcare systems like Cedars-Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian to facilitate seamless transitions for patients from hospital to outpatient care and to collaborate on research. A core part of its strategy involves a proprietary data and precision medicine platform, being developed with partners like Palantir, to standardize clinical care and improve treatment personalization through data analysis.

Keywords: severe mental illness, integrated care, value-based healthcare, outpatient clinics, behavioral health, psychiatry-led, mental healthcare, long-term care, precision medicine, care coordination