Share ThisIn today’s demanding world, stress, grief and uncertainty can show up at any moment — and mental health support shouldn’t feel hard to find, navigate or start. That’s why Highmark launched Mental Well-Being Powered by Spring Health to make it easier for members to access personalized support that meets them where they are, whether they’re looking for coaching and self-guided tools, therapy, medication management, or help during a crisis.
For millions of health plan members, getting mental health support no longer means waiting months for an appointment or navigating a fragmented system alone. Highmark members can access care through Mental Well-Being in less than three days. Grounded in precision provider matching, members are guided to care tailored for their specific needs, enabling them to get better, faster.
This work reflects our Living Health strategy — improving health and creating a better, more connected experience for members, with mental health as a critical part of overall health. Mental Well-Being is already making a difference in the lives of the people we serve like Rich, Natalie and Jamie.
In the videos below, you’ll hear from Jamie, a Highmark team member and health plan member, as she shares her family’s experience using Mental Well-Being Powered by Spring Health. Her story is one example of how this support can meet people across many different moments and needs.
Jamie shares her family’s experience using Mental Well-Being Powered by Spring Health — what prompted her to seek support, what the process was like, and how the program made a difference for her entire family.
Jamie: What led me to consider using Mental Well-Being started first with my son. My youngest son has autism and we were experiencing a lot of behavioral health issues with him. I was able to get my son seen by a virtual provider. We opted for that.
That meant that I didn't have to search for care for a month for my son until I was able to get him in with an in-person therapist. And from there, we were able to get myself care, my husband, and then eventually my other son.
For my younger son, when he engaged in therapy with the solution, I stayed with him in the room the entire time. With my older son, he's 12, so he felt comfortable with me leaving the room for his portion of therapy to have that privacy.
Life definitely looks better for our family post engagement with Mental Well-Being Powered by Spring Health. We are not engaging the behavior that sometimes happen with our children and we're able to co-regulate them better, which means that we're not seeing the outlandish tantrums that we use to and pulling our hair out every single night trying to figure out what we're going to do or what we did wrong as parents. We are talking to each other in a much more calm and even tone. Overall, we're just better.
Coaching is an important — and often misunderstood — form of mental health support. In this video, Jamie explains what mental health coaching is, how it differs from therapy, and why it became a meaningful part of her own well-being journey.
Jamie: So before I engaged in coaching through Mental Well-Being, I was a very reactive parent. Dealing with a lot of loud volume issues at home, a lot of chaos sometimes, in addition to just bringing sometimes the stress from the office home. I would find myself raising my voice more, matching tone for tone which can sometimes make the situation worse for everybody involved.
After going through the parenting coaching, I really learned to bring down the level of my voice and maintain my own level of calmness to try to help coregulate my son. My children even commented, "Wow, Mom, you're a lot calmer," which was a shock to both myself and my husband.
Just being able to connect with a coach instead of a therapist right away, provided a great foundation for me to start to be a better parent and a working professional, and then eventually I did transition to therapy once I saw how great the recommendation for the coach was for me right away. And when I saw the benefits from my interaction with Spring Health, and I got my son in and my husband and my other son, I became a true believer in the solution, not just as an employee but as a patient.
In this video, Jamie reflects on what it was like to experience Mental Well-Being Powered by Spring Health not just as a Highmark employee, but as a health plan member. She shares why having support in place was so important for her family, including access to crisis care, and how easy it was to complete an assessment, get matched to the right provider and schedule care.
Jamie: As an employee of Highmark, I went into this knowing that Mental Well-Being Powered by Spring Health was an extension of our behavioral health provider network, in essence, giving members access to behavioral health services such as therapy, med management, coaching within three days or less.
As a Highmark member, having access to Mental Well-Being is so important for our family. Just knowing that we have access to 24/7 crisis care if we need it, that is huge. Using Mental Well-Being is extremely easy. I'm an app person, so I went directly to the My Highmark app, logged into my account, the entire process took less than five minutes to get an account created for myself, do the initial assessment and schedule with a provider. I was able to get all of our family seen within less than three days and in some instances within one day.
The sign-up process with the initial assessment was also incredibly accurate because it matches you with a provider based off of how you answer the initial assessment question.
And I have to say, their algorithm for matching myself and my children and my husband to a provider was spot on. It really is unlike your traditional behavioral health setting in the most amazing way.
Jamie Briscoe, DNP, RN, CCM, SP, is a product manager within Highmark Health’s behavioral health portfolio, supporting work to make mental health care easier to find, navigate and start.
A Highmark health plan member, wife and parent of two sons, Jamie brings both professional expertise and real-life perspective to the conversation about behavioral health—after starting with coaching herself, she’s passionate about helping other families take that first step and get connected to the right support faster, in a way that meets them where they are.
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Need to find info about providers, prescriptions, coverage, claims, ID cards, or health spending or savings accounts? If so, your Highmark member site is the place to go. (It’s separate from this blog.)