This startup is opening a mental health clinic that offers ketamine therapy. We got an exclusive look at the pitch deck it used to raise $5.4 million.

But one new startup is bucking those trends. Being Health, an integrated mental healthcare company, is opening its first location, located in Manhattan’s Financial District.

The startup will provide a range of virtual and in-person mental healthcare services, including more traditional forms of care, such as psychiatry and psychotherapy, as well as less common behavioral health services, including acupuncture and ketamine infusions.

To fuel its launch, Being Health has raised $5.4 million in seed funding from 18 Park and HDS Capital, the company said.

The multi-service model draws on longtime psychiatrist Dr. Allie Sharma’s own experiences caring for patients, she told Business Insider.

“The model we created was really informed by the way I practice psychiatry,” she said. “I often do what I can do in my scope of practice while also referring for other services — for example, nutrition, functional medicine, or acupuncture.”

For example, Sharma said she saw a white space in New York City’s mental healthcare market when she began referring her patients with treatment-resistant depression to ketamine clinics, but couldn’t find any ketamine clinics that also provided psychiatric care.

While numerous studies have shown that ketamine may be effective at treating severe depression, infusions of the psychedelic drug remain controversial. The FDA has approved an intranasal form of ketamine for treatment-resistant depression — Janssen Pharmaceuticals’ drug Spravato — but intravenous ketamine infusions aren’t FDA-approved and will have to be prescribed off-label by Being Health.

Sharma said the startup’s ketamine treatment protocols have been carefully constructed using existing research, and only patients with treatment-resistant depression will be eligible for the infusions. Being Health patients will also undergo a 75-minute consultation prior to any infusions to assess any potential risk, and the startup may also do lab work or check the patient’s medical history if necessary, she said.

Being Health’s ketamine infusions are designed to be administered twice a week for four weeks and paired with psychotherapy before and after the procedures, Sharma said.

The startup is launching with 11 providers, not including Sharma and Being Health’s medical director, to deliver the range of care it’s promising. Services like ketamine infusions and acupuncture will have to be administered in person, but others, like nutrition counseling, will have a virtual option, Sharma said.

Being Health will require patients to pay out of pocket for all its services at first, but plans to start negotiating contracts with insurers in the near future, Sharma said. At launch, the company will also accept health savings accounts and flexible spending account payments.

The clinic lists many of its cash prices on its website. A single psychotherapy session, for example, will range from $175 to $275.

While some investors have shied away from physical clinics, HDS Capital founder and managing partner Haim Dabah said Being Health’s in-person offerings were key to his investment.

“That’s what will differentiate us,” he said. “When it comes to this novel approach to addressing mental health, you can’t do that with telehealth.”

While Sharma declined to share how much cash runway Being Health has after its seed round, she said the startup plans to expand over the next three to five years with more clinics in New York City and then to other cities across the country.

Dabah said that Being Health will plan to begin raising additional funding for that expansion midway through this year. But he noted that the company expects its first clinic and future clinics, to be profitable by the end of their first year.

“The interesting part of this business model is that they don’t need to fuel expansion for it to be successful,” he said.

See the 17-slide pitch deck mental health startup Being Health used to raise $5.4 million in seed funding.