Salt Lake City — Numinus Wellness Inc. (“Numinus”, the “Company”) (TSX: NUMI) (OTCQX: NUMIF), a mental health care company advancing innovative treatments and safe, evidence-based psychedelic-assisted therapies, is pleased to announce the launch of a Utah-based pilot program to help businesses improve employee mental health by offering ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) as a health benefit for eligible employees (“Corporate KAP”).

While Numinus’ Utah clinics, operating under the Cedar Psychiatry brand, have secured insurance coverage from select insurance companies for direct billing of ketamine for treatment-resistant depression, access remains a challenge for many patients. To bridge this gap, Cedar Psychiatry and Utah-based HempLucid have been piloting Corporate KAP since 2019 to ensure that its employees with a mental health diagnosis can access the care they need. Per the arrangement, HempLucid covers the cost of ketamine infusions while leveraging its existing healthcare insurance plan to support the therapy component of KAP.

“It’s been revolutionary to how we operate as a business,” says Chase Hudson, founder and CEO of HempLucid. “Offering ketamine treatments to our employees has shown incredible benefits for healing, positivity, and productivity in the work environment. We are in a new era. A new social contract is being formed between employees and employers, and businesses are being forced to take a look at the mental health of their employees. We’re working hard to get out ahead of it and take care of our people in a proactive way.”

With mental illness considered among the highest cost drivers for employers, investing in workers’ mental health is becoming a top priority for business leaders. Mental illness accounts for 70 percent of workplace disability costs.1 A study by Deloitte found that the median yearly return-on-investment of CAN$1.00 spent on mental health programs was CAN$2.18 among companies that had mental health initiatives in place for three or more years.2 Corporate KAP is an innovative way to help employers increase productivity, lower absenteeism, and reduce disability costs by improving employee mental health.

Dr. Reid Robison, Chief Clinical Officer, Numinus, commented: “It’s more important than ever to take care of our individual and collective mental health. This pilot expands access to ketamine-assisted psychotherapy in the interest of not only helping individuals and families but also a global workforce that continues to report increases in stress and burnout. It is truly inspiring to see a company like HempLucid take care of employees in this way.”

Numinus recently completed the acquisition of Novamind, which includes eight clinics in Utah operating as Cedar Psychiatry and two clinics in Arizona operating as Foundations for Change. Numinus is currently exploring how the Corporate KAP service offering can be expanded throughout its 13 clinics across North America. 

Numinus’ Cedar Psychiatry clinics offer patients access to a range of mental health services, including ketamine therapy, transcranial-magnetic stimulation (TMS), Spravato, talk therapy, and medication management.

To learn about Corporate KAP for employers, visit: www.cedarpsychiatry.com/corporate-kap
To see a video about the Corporate KAP program being offered at HempLucid, visit:  https://youtu.be/RIu1axMAS7k.

About Numinus

Numinus Wellness (TSX: NUMI) helps people to heal and be well through the development and delivery of innovative mental health care and access to safe, evidence-based psychedelic-assisted therapies. The Numinus model – including psychedelic research, production, and clinic care – is at the forefront of a transformation aimed at healing rather than managing symptoms of depression, anxiety, trauma, pain, and substance use. At Numinus, we are leading the integration of psychedelic-assisted therapies into mainstream clinical practice and building the foundation for a healthier society.

Learn more at www.numinus.com and www.cedarpsychiatry.com, and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.