Parenting a young child diagnosed with or suspected of having ADHD can be difficult. Some children with this condition may have difficulty completing school work or may become easily irritated and have tantrums.
Parents who seek professional help may be shocked to learn that due to a national shortage of psychologists, it can take up to a year to receive a diagnosis and begin seeing a therapist. is common. And that's not even mentioning the high cost of out-of-network treatment, which can cost up to several thousand dollars a year.
Clarity Pediatrics, a chronic care startup founded in 2021, cuts the wait time from months to months to receive a diagnosis and begin ADHD treatment at an average out-of-pocket cost of $15 per session. It is said that it can be shortened to 1 day.
The company's secret sauce is that instead of providing individual therapy to children, the startup conducts eight-week group therapy sessions for parents of newly diagnosed or previously diagnosed children. That's what I'm doing.
Clarity chose to offer Behavioral Parent Training (BPT) for one simple reason. That's because the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends her BPT for families with children ages 5 to 12 with mild to moderate ADHD. Because young children are not mature enough to change on their own, BPT teaches parents strategies and skills to help children stay focused in school and control their emotional outbursts.
“There is no evidence that one-on-one therapy is effective for young children with ADHD,” said Christina Lamontagne, CEO and co-founder of Clarity.
Over the past 18 months, Clarity has provided online care to thousands of California families. The company also plans to use $10 million in seed funding from Rethink Impact, with participation from Homebrew and Maverick Ventures, to serve other states in California. 2024.
Clarity is certainly not alone in trying to solve the problem of a shortage of children's therapists. Startups like Brightline, Little Otter, and Bend Health are offering pediatric mental health services, including ADHD, online.
For now, Clarity is focused on treating ADHD in children between the ages of 5 and 12 by providing diagnosis, treatment, and prescriptions, but will eventually expand to treat less complex conditions such as asthma, allergies, and obesity. It also plans to provide health care for children with chronic illnesses.
Prior to founding Clarity, LaMontagne was chief operating officer at Pill Club and director of corporate development at Johnson & Johnson. The company's co-founder, Dr. Alessandro Larrazabal, is a pediatrician trained at the University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University, and previously worked in specialty services at Kaiser Permanente.
Clarity's seed round also included investments from January Ventures, Vamos Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and City Light VC.
Heidi Patel, managing partner at Rethink Impact, said the incidence of chronic disease in children has tripled over the past 40 years, but the health system does not have enough expertise to treat these children. He said he invested in Clarity because there was a shortage of homes.
“Waiting times are so long that even when a diagnosis is made, treatment is often not available, which is why 80 per cent of children are left without treatment at all,” she says. “With Clarity, you get the best care possible.”