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Grow Therapy offers a new framework for youth mental health: Compass Parenting. Updated: August 20, 2026 New findings show that when something's wrong, most teens tell no one; Compass Parenting helps parents open the door without forcing it. NEW YORK, NY, August 20, 2026 - Grow Therapy (Grow), a leading mental health platform that connects patients with rigorously vetted, insurance-covered therapists, today released new data and introduced Compass Parenting, a framework that shifts parents from gatekeepers of their children's digital experiences to guides who help them navigate those experiences themselves. The findings draw on three sources: Grow and Morning Consult's Youth Mental Health Survey, a peer-reviewed study of clinical outcomes among Grow clients ages 9-17, and the company's internal reporting. Together, they point to a generation willing to seek support, and a disconnect between how parents and teens perceive mental health. Introducing Compass Parenting. As technology limits a parent's ability to fully control what young people see and experience, the traditional role of parent as "gatekeeper" is being challenged. Grow worked with renowned clinical psychologist Dr. Jacinta Jimenez on the concept of Compass Parenting to serve as a framework for raising children in a complex technology-centered world. Rather than attempting to enforce rigid rules about screen time, parents act as guides equipping children with internal emotional regulation, self-awareness, and professional support. "Our goal should be to raise children with enough emotional resources that technology isn't their first and only refuge," said Jacinta Jimenez, Psy.D., Clinical Advisor to Grow Therapy. "We have introduced the idea of 'Compass Parenting' because shielding young people from every challenge isn't realistic, but helping them overcome those challenges through connection, context and guidance is a viable long-term strategy. It's about giving parents a new way to support their children as they build the skills and confidence to navigate the world on their own." An important starting point is realizing distress doesn't always look the way adults expect. The Youth Mental Health Survey reveals a divide between parental perception and youth reality: * 91% of parents rate their child's mental health as good or excellent, compared with 54% of youth who say the same. * When something's wrong, 59% of youth said they usually keep it to themselves; only 24% of parents think their child does, a 35-point gap. * Parents also overestimate their role as a confidant: 65% believe their child often or always turns to them when upset, compared with just 27% of youth who say they do. When upset, youth pick what's immediately available, but potentially least helpful: * Social media is the most popular place youth turn when upset. 67% report scrolling under emotional strain, compared to just 9% who talk to a therapist or counselor. * Teens with good mental health tend to have more open dialogue with parents. Nearly 50% say they'd talk to a parent when stressed. * Teens with poor mental health show the opposite pattern. Only 23% would talk to their parents, but they're 11 percentage points more likely to say they'd see a therapist (24% vs. 13% of peers with good mental health). These numbers suggest that for the teens who need support most, parents can't wait for a child to reach out first. They have to be the ones to open the door, and how they open it matters. For parents ready to put Compass Parenting into practice, Dr. Jimenez offers three practical principles that make up the GPS of Compass Parenting: * G: Get Curious. Approach teens with genuine interest rather than judgment, swapping "Why are you always on your phone?" for "What does scrolling do for you when you've had a hard day?" * P: Partner, Don't Police. Build solutions together, whether that's phone-free moments the whole family joins, nighttime routines that protect sleep, or a shared plan for who to turn to when stress builds. * S: Seek to Understand Rather Than Assume. Because parents and teens often perceive adolescent distress differently, use open-ended questions like "What's been the hardest part of this week?" to invite conversation without interrogation. Finding the right therapist also matters. Even when practicing the GPS principles of Compass Parenting, there are scenarios that warrant bringing in a professional. Today, youth mental health remains a national emergency, but only about half of youth who need treatment ever get it. New peer-reviewed research on nearly 10,000 young people ages 9 to 17 treated through Grow shows that when children and teens get into care and stay engaged, they get better. * The big picture: The bond between patient and therapist typically takes hold around the third session, which is exactly when many young people drop out of care. In this study, roughly 3 in 4 attended at least three sessions, staying past that critical threshold. * Real results: The majority of Grow clients ages 9-17 with elevated depression or anxiety improved enough to meet a high clinical standard, e.g.:, symptoms like loss of interest, low mood, nervousness, and excessive worry became meaningfully less frequent, less severe, or both. * Other recent developments: Demand surged from 2024 to 2025, with Gen Alpha utilization up 57% and parenting-related searches increasing 145%. "Half of all lifetime mental health conditions emerge by age 14, which makes these years the most important window we have to intervene," said Inderpreet Dhillon, MD, Senior Medical Director at Grow Therapy. "What this study shows is that when young people connect with a therapist and stay in care past those critical first sessions, most see real improvement. Reaching kids in that window can shape not just how they feel today, but the trajectory of their adult lives." Methodology: Youth Mental Health Survey: Commissioned by Grow Therapy with Morning Consult; conducted online June 18-25, 2026, across two independent samples: 500 parents of children ages 13-21, and 525 youth ages 13-17. Margin of error: +/-4 percentage points for the full samples; margins for subgroups are wider. Digital Health Study: "Engagement and outcomes of children and adolescents enrolled in a technology-enabled mental health treatment platform," published in DIGITAL HEALTH, 2026. Retrospective cohort study of Grow Therapy patients ages 9-17 with a first provider visit between January 2022 and April 2024. Grow Internal Reporting: Anonymized platform data from 2024-2025 About Grow Therapy. Grow Therapy is an online therapy platform that meets you where you are. With thousands of providers, therapy and medication support, and insurance-covered care, starting therapy is faster, easier, and more affordable. This article is not meant to be a replacement for medical advice. Grow Therapy recommend speaking with a therapist for personalized information about your mental health. If you don't currently have a therapist, Grow Therapy can connect you with one who can offer support and address any questions or concerns. If you or your child is experiencing a medical emergency, is considering harming themselves or others, or is otherwise in imminent danger, you should dial 9-1-1 and/or go to the nearest emergency room.

Grow Therapy and Stanford University launch research partnership to establish clinical safety standards in AI for mental health. Updated: June 24, 2026 Inaugural study will produce one of the first psychiatric specialist-validated benchmarks for evaluating clinical risk in AI responses to real-world mental health conversations. NEW YORK, June 23, 2026 - Grow Therapy (Grow) today announced a research partnership with Stanford University focused on developing rigorous, evidence-based standards for the safe use of artificial intelligence (AI) in mental health care. The partnership is led by Principal Investigator Jonathan Chen, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford, in collaboration with Stanford Psychiatry. The inaugural study will measure the responses of leading AI models to mental health crises and evaluate which design choices most effectively reduce harm as well as handle these situations appropriately. Stanford will work from de-identified clinical cases involving client safety concerns, drawn from conversations routed for human review by screening systems of Grow's AI coach, a conversational tool its clients use between sessions with their therapist. Researchers, including a panel of psychiatrists, will then: * Evaluate how often leading AI models give harmful responses to these sensitive scenarios; * Test whether layering models with a dedicated safety reviewer reduces that harm; and, * Evaluate other safety mechanisms designed to elicit, from the mental health specialists' point-of-view, more responsible responses. This independent validation will give the field of large language models (LLMs) a shared framework for assessing what responses should be in the context of mental health conversations. Why Grow. Grow's AI coach was built by mental health professionals specifically for supporting clients between their therapy sessions, with multiple safety layers embedded from the outset. Each conversation is automatically scored for clinical quality, tone, and risk, and flagged interactions are reviewed by licensed clinicians. Grow's approach is informed by an external AI advisory panel of independent experts spanning clinical psychology, clinical AI research, ethics, and mental health epidemiology. "It is essential that the mental health field develop evidence-based benchmarks for safe AI responses," said Manoj Kanagaraj, MD, Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder of Grow Therapy. "We believe the strongest model keeps a licensed therapist in the loop, as ours does, but we recognize that some people may turn to general-purpose LLMs for mental health support. Partnering with Dr. Chen and his team at Stanford will establish clear standards, leveraging Grow's real-world experience, to create a shared yardstick for AI safety in mental health. Our hope is that this work results in fewer harms reaching the people who turn to LLMs of any kind for mental health aid, especially general-purpose ones not designed for it." While much of the field relies on synthetic testing, Grow contributes the real-world scenarios that make a credible clinical benchmark possible. Media Contact About Grow Therapy. Grow Therapy is an online therapy platform that meets you where you are. With thousands of providers, therapy and medication support, and insurance-covered care, starting therapy is faster, easier, and more affordable. This article is not meant to be a replacement for medical advice. Grow Therapy recommend speaking with a therapist for personalized information about your mental health. If you don't currently have a therapist, Grow Therapy can connect you with one who can offer support and address any questions or concerns. If you or your child is experiencing a medical emergency, is considering harming themselves or others, or is otherwise in imminent danger, you should dial 9-1-1 and/or go to the nearest emergency room.