Mayfield leads a $4.4m investment round in the mental health care startup.
Lantern, a mental health care service developed with the help of researchers at Stanford University, Washington University in St Louis and Pennsylvania State University, has raised $4.4m.
The round was led by Mayfield, a venture firm from Silicon Valley, with seed funding from SoftTechVC. Chris Cox, chief product officer at Facebook, served as an advisor.
Lantern offers online coaching to mental health patients for either $49 a month or $300 a year, checking on the user’s mental state at regular intervals with questions such as “is your life meaningful and purposeful?”.
The service connects the patient to a professional occasionally or when needed. Professionals take a cut of the monthly fee and are able to communicate with users via text message.
On top of this, the service also teaches users how to control their behaviour through muscle relaxation and deep breathing techniques.
The company recently secured $4m from the US National Institutes of Health to study eating disorders and body image in the student community. Thirty institutions of higher education are currently participating, giving their students free access to the service.
