Tech Is Revolutionizing Healthcare—But Not (Yet) For Patients and Families Impacted By Serious Mental Illness
Digital health is transforming care, but families supporting loved ones with serious mental illness (SMI) are being left behind. Here’s why that matters and what tech developers and providers can do.
Introduction: Digital Health Is Booming, But SMI Caregivers Are Being Left Behind
From 2020 to 2022, digital health experienced an unprecedented surge. Fueled by historically low interest rates and pandemic-driven urgency, investors poured more than $29 billion into the sector in 2021 alone. That capital gave rise to a wave of innovation in telehealth, remote monitoring, and AI-powered diagnostics, all with the aim of transforming how healthcare is delivered and accessed.
Then came the correction. As interest rates climbed and market sentiment cooled, valuations plummeted and funding dried up. Now, with companies like Hinge Health and Omada Health going public, the digital health industry seems to be entering a new, more mature phase.
But despite this progress, the unique and high-stakes challenges of SMI, especially for caregivers, remain largely unaddressed.
The Digital Health Revolution Wasn’t Built For SMI
New Tech Is Optimizing A System That Wasn’t Designed For SMI
The digital health revolution promised to make healthcare more accessible, efficient, and patient-centered. In many ways, it has delivered for individuals managing chronic physical conditions or those seeking access to therapy without being put on a lengthy waitlist.
But these innovations are built on top of a healthcare system that already fails people with SMI. Digital tools now optimize a system that was never designed to support the complexity of SMI in the first place. As a result, 13 million Americans caring for loved ones with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and related conditions are still left behind.
Most digital health products prioritize convenience and self-management, which can work for patients who are able to engage independently. But SMI caregiving is different. Family members are often the ones managing appointments, tracking symptoms, and stepping in when things escalate. They need tools designed for that role.
Even telehealth, often seen as a breakthrough, falls short in this context. For caregivers, it's not just about helping a loved one show up for an appointment, it's about making that appointment meaningful and therapeutic. When trauma, paranoia, or confusion make trust difficult, technology must bridge the gap, not widen it.
That means designing digital tools that prioritize trust, relationship-building, offer plain-English guidance, and provide experienced human support alongside clinical care. Trust can't be built through convenience alone. It requires consistency, emotional safety, and clear communication. Supporting SMI caregivers well requires reducing fear and discomfort through the development of effective, tailored tools.
The Invisible Backbone: Caregivers
Caregivers Are Essential Healthcare Workers, But Digital Tools Aren’t Designed For Them
Caregivers of individuals with SMI do far more than just help out. They work overtime to manage medications, coordinate appointments, navigate insurance, handle crises, and provide emotional support in the absence of formal care. And yet, they’re virtually invisible in the world of digital health innovation.
Mainstream tools don’t meet their needs. Stress-reduction apps may offer breathing exercises or meditations, but they don’t address the guilt, fear, and isolation caregivers experience when managing a loved one’s mental health condition. Social media groups provide peer connection but little privacy, structure, or clinical relevance. Most care coordination platforms are geared toward physical illnesses like cancer or post-op recovery, not the behavioral and relational unpredictability of SMI.
This is a massive oversight. Caregivers fill critical gaps in care, often 24/7, with no training, limited access to professional guidance, and little formal recognition. Digital health platforms must equip them with specialized tools to keep doing the work our system depends on, especially given the proven ROI of family support.
Mental Health Care Requires A Unique Approach
Mental illness doesn’t follow the patterns of physical illness. It’s episodic, dynamic, often invisible, and can escalate without warning. The nature of SMI means a person can seem stable one week and be in crisis the next, sometimes without warning.
Caregivers must be equipped to handle:
Crisis navigation (knowing when to call 911 or when not to)
Behavioral tracking and pattern recognition
Navigating psychiatric systems, legal rules, and financing frameworks
Communication with a loved one who may not believe they are ill
Coping with their own feelings of anxiety, grief, or burnout
Yet digital tools rarely include them. They're cut out of care plans, disconnected from providers, and left to figure it out alone.
This Gap Hurts The Whole System
Leaving SMI Caregivers Out Creates Massive Preventable Costs
When caregivers are unsupported, everyone pays the price. Medication adherence drops. Crises go unmanaged. Emergency room visits and psychiatric hospitalizations increase. Outcomes worsen, and costs climb.
Meanwhile, caregivers themselves burn out. Some leave jobs, some develop their own health problems, and others lose housing or stability.
Without the right tools, guidance, and access, caregivers are less able to:
Support consistent medication adherence
De-escalate early signs of crisis
Coordinate or follow through with appointments
Maintain stable home environments
As a result, SMI patients experience more frequent psychiatric crises, leading to higher emergency department visits, increased psychiatric hospitalizations, and worse overall health outcomes. At the same time, caregiver burnout can lead to disengagement, family dysfunction, and even the loss of housing or income. Indeed, research shows that immediate family members of people with SMI often experience chronic stress and trauma-related symptoms that closely resemble PTSD. Health systems and payers end up shouldering the costs of what are essentially preventable breakdowns in care.
The truth is, SMI patients often require an active counterpart—someone to track changes, follow up with providers, and advocate when systems fall short. That person is almost always a family caregiver. When caregivers are supported with digital tools that help them navigate this complexity, the impact is immediate: fewer avoidable hospitalizations, better patient functioning, and higher retention in outpatient care.
From Niche Problem to Systemic Opportunity
SMI is frequently viewed as a narrow slice of the healthcare pie, making up only 5% of Americans. But this framing misses the bigger picture. When SMI goes unsupported, the downstream consequences are wide-ranging, high-cost, and deeply interconnected:
Higher emergency department utilization
Increased psychiatric hospitalizations
Lower treatment adherence
Increased risk of homelessness or incarceration
Lost productivity and wages for caregivers
Long-term strain on entire families and communities
In other words, this is not a niche problem. It’s a system-wide blind spot.
And that means it’s also a massive opportunity.
Caregivers are the single most underleveraged lever for reducing total cost of care, improving patient outcomes, and making behavioral health systems more sustainable. As value-based care continues to expand, solutions that recognize and integrate caregivers into digital infrastructure will be best positioned to lead and deliver results.
Building a Future of Digital Health That Includes SMI Caregivers
What Better Looks Like
If digital health is going to rise to meet the demands of modern behavioral healthcare, it must start treating SMI caregivers not as passive bystanders, but as active collaborators in care.
That means designing tools that acknowledge their role and help them do it better. Here’s what that could look like:
Real-time, actionable insights caregivers can use to spot early warning signs, manage symptoms at home, and know when to escalate.
Two-way communication tools that allow caregivers to share relevant context with providers and receive feedback without replacing clinical work.
Private, moderated support communities designed specifically for the challenges of SMI caregiving—an important alternative to social media groups.
Built-in education that is evidence-based, practical *and* easy to understand.
These tools don’t replace clinicians. They help caregivers support them.
What Providers Can Do Today
You don’t need to wait for the perfect product to begin supporting caregivers of people with SMI. There are concrete steps providers and clinical teams can take right now:
Review your workflows: Are caregivers represented?
Audit your system: What supports are in place for SMI families?
Partner with platforms that prioritize caregiver inclusion and mental health
Train staff to engage with caregivers facing burnout or trauma
Pilot new solutions. Even small ones can make a big difference
Caregivers Are the Force Multiplier
In the broader healthcare system, we already believe in the value of integrated, continuous, team-based care. That’s the heart of value-based models. But even the most forward-thinking approaches still leave caregivers out of the equation.
That’s a grave oversight, especially when it comes to serious mental illness. Because when you equip caregivers with the right tools, insight, and connection, you unlock one of the most powerful force multipliers in the behavioral health system.
We’ve Seen This Before
When Maven Clinic launched, digital maternity care seemed niche. Now it’s a standard benefit across employers and Medicaid.
Caregiving for people with serious mental illness is in that same early phase. It’s complex. It’s messy. It’s full of edge cases and uncertainty.
And that’s exactly why we need to build for it.
Conclusion: Inclusion Is Innovation
The next phase of digital health isn’t just about what we build. It’s about who we build it for.
SMI caregivers have been left out. It’s time to bring them in. Because when we design with caregivers in mind, we strengthen the whole system.
Let’s make sure the future of digital health includes the people holding it together.