The healthtech company teaching your own therapist to offer legal, medically supervised ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.
"Expanding access to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy - safely and responsibly."
Most attempts to bring psychedelics into mainstream care start by building a clinic. Journey Clinical started somewhere stranger: with the therapist you already have. Its platform lets independent, licensed psychotherapists add Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy to their own practice, while an in-house medical team quietly handles the parts a therapist legally can't - eligibility, the prescription, and ongoing monitoring.
The idea is deceptively simple, and it solves a real bottleneck. In conventional mental-health care, the clinician who knows a patient best - their therapist - usually cannot prescribe. Meanwhile the prescriber often barely knows them. Journey Clinical splits the two roles on purpose and stitches them back together with software, training, and shared clinical protocols. The result is a collaborative-care model borrowed from primary medicine and pointed at a treatment that badly needs guardrails.
Ketamine is legal, and - unlike most psychedelics - already prescribable off-label. That makes it the practical on-ramp for a whole category. Journey Clinical's patients don't sit under an IV drip in an unfamiliar clinic. They receive sublingual ketamine lozenges and self-administer them during a two-to-three-hour dosing session with their own therapist, in person or remotely, wrapped in preparation beforehand and integration afterward.
The company was founded in 2020 in New York by Jonathan Sabbagh and Myriam Barthes. Sabbagh's route in was personal: after psychedelics helped him through PTSD and chronic burnout, he went back to school to study clinical psychology. Barthes, once the co-founder and COO, now serves as CEO while Sabbagh chairs the board. Their shared premise is that access and safety are not opposites - and that the fastest way to deliver both is to equip clinicians who are already in practice.
"Journey Clinical provides both licensed psychotherapists and patients with access to these therapies - therapists get everything they need to confidently deliver psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy within their own practice, while eligible patients gain access to a world-class medical team." Journey Clinical · About the platform
Every patient stays inside a therapeutic alliance. The treatment arc has three phases, and the medicine only appears in the middle one.
A patient is screened by Journey Clinical's medical team for eligibility and receives a ketamine prescription. Their therapist runs preparation sessions to set intentions and safety.
In a 2-3 hour session, the patient self-administers sublingual ketamine lozenges with their therapist present - in person or remotely - to process emotions and insights safely.
Follow-up psychotherapy helps translate the experience into lasting behavioral and emotional change. Outcomes are monitored, and dosing is adjusted with medical oversight.
The design choice that defines the company: your prescriber and your psychotherapist are deliberately different people, coordinated on one platform.
More than 2,500 licensed mental-health professionals across 21+ states use Journey Clinical to add KAP without building medical infrastructure or taking on prescribing risk. They complete a KAP education module and join peer consultation groups before seeing patients.
People living with depression, anxiety, PTSD and related conditions - often after conventional treatments fell short - reach evidence-based ketamine therapy through a therapist they already trust, frequently from home.
The problems it targets are structural: prescribers and therapists rarely coordinate; standalone ketamine clinics can feel transactional and unsupported; and safe access to psychedelic-assisted care has been scarce, expensive, and geographically uneven. Journey Clinical's answer is to knit medical oversight into the ongoing relationship a patient already has.
Pre-seed round (2021) undisclosed. Bars scaled to disclosed amounts.
The $8.5M Series A in January 2023 was led by Union Square Ventures - the firm's first investment in the psychedelics space - with participation from AlleyCorp, Fifty Years, Able Partners, Gaingels, Palo Santo, PsyMed Ventures, Coalition Operators, Mystic Ventures, Colibri and Satori Capital.
That round followed a $3M seed led by Fifty Years in 2021 and an earlier pre-seed backed by Neo Kuma Ventures, PsyMed Ventures and Beckley Waves.
Rivals build clinics or ship ketamine straight to consumers. Journey Clinical equips the patient's existing therapist, keeping care inside a real relationship.
A dedicated medical team prescribes and monitors; the therapist does the psychotherapy. Neither is asked to do the other's job.
In-network with Aetna, Cigna/Evernorth, BCBS, UnitedHealthcare and more - pushing the medical visit as low as $97.
Therapists complete a KAP education module and peer consultation before their first patient. Education is the product, not a footnote.
Structured measurement and medical oversight run through every phase, aligning the model with clinical-research standards.
Sliding-scale rates, low-dose psycholytic sessions, group KAP and veteran discounts widen access beyond the base price.
Alternatives in the market include Mindbloom, Nue Life, Better U and traditional infusion clinics; Osmind serves clinicians on the software side.
Jonathan Sabbagh and Myriam Barthes launch Journey Clinical to expand access to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
Fifty Years leads the seed; PsyMed Ventures, Neo Kuma Ventures and others back the therapist-enablement platform.
Independent psychotherapists gain the ability to offer ketamine-assisted psychotherapy with medical support.
Union Square Ventures leads its first psychedelics investment, bringing total funding to about $12M.
The provider base passes 2,500 therapists across 21+ states, with Spravato and added services.
Co-founder Jonathan Sabbagh on The Trauma Therapist Project, on his path from PTSD to founding the company.
Listen →Journey Clinical's KAP education center walks through the platform and treatment model.
Explore the KAP Center →Video interviews and demos are published on Journey Clinical's site and social channels linked below.
It runs a collaborative-care platform that lets licensed psychotherapists offer Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy in their own practice, while Journey Clinical's in-house medical team handles patient eligibility, prescriptions and monitoring.
Co-founders Jonathan Sabbagh (Executive Chairman, former CEO) and Myriam Barthes (Co-Founder & CEO), based in New York.
The medical component can be as low as $97 per visit with in-network insurance, or a discounted self-pay rate. Therapy fees are separate and paid directly to the patient's therapist.
Roughly $12M total, including a $3M seed in 2021 and an $8.5M Series A led by Union Square Ventures in January 2023.
Instead of running its own infusion clinics or shipping ketamine directly to consumers, Journey Clinical equips a patient's existing therapist to deliver KAP with a dedicated medical team behind them.