Meet Melinda Gong and Gun Young Lim, Co-Founders of Sol Health, a digital mental health startup supporting the next generation of therapists to expand access to care for young people. Through Sol Health, they’re addressing both the youth mental health crisis and the nationwide therapist shortage by connecting young adults with therapists-in-training who share their lived experiences.
Youth mental health continues to be a growing challenge, with young people facing barriers to care like high costs, long waitlists, and a nationwide shortage of therapists. As of December 2023, over 169 million Americans—more than half the population—live in designated Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas. The country needs nearly 7,000 additional mental health providers to meet current demand, while waitlists for youth therapy can stretch months, and session costs often exceed $200 out of pocket.
Enter a digital mental health startup co-founded by Gun Young Lim and Melinda Gong that’s tackling the youth mental health crisis from a unique angle. Rather than simply expanding access to existing therapists, Sol Health is building the pipeline for tomorrow’s mental health workforce. The company connects young adults with therapists-in-training who share their lived experiences and cultural understanding, offering $30/session therapy while simultaneously addressing the nationwide therapist shortage. By supporting the next generation of therapists to deliver deeply relatable, affordable and personalized care, Sol Health is creating a sustainable model that grows with the communities it serves.
As part of the 2025 Headstream Accelerator, a SecondMuse innovation program focused on youth mental health, Sol Health had the opportunity to build alongside youth co-creators, mentors and advisors. That experience helped the team sharpen their thinking, stress-test their assumptions, and stay grounded in the realities of the young people they aim to serve.
We spoke with Sol Health’s Co-Founder, Gun Young Lim, about Sol Health’s approach, what they are learning along the way, and what they hope to achieve next.
Gun Young Lim and Melinda Gong, founders of Sol Health
1. What inspired you and Melinda to start Sol Health? And what have your journeys as founders been like so far?
Melinda and I started Sol Health for two reasons. First, our own mental health journeys helped us gain insight into why today’s mental health systems fail Gen Z and youth. Second, we saw that the vast majority of mental health startups were building for the short-term future.
Many companies today focus on improving access to care, often prioritizing growth over sustainability. We wanted to take a more root-cause approach by addressing the therapist shortage directly. Our goal was to start building toward the long-term future of mental health while still providing the most affordable and accessible care option for Gen Z and youth.
As founders, we have found the journey to be a learning experience from day one. We started Sol Health while we were still in college, and building a company while also building a personal network has been one of the most challenging parts. At the same time, it has been incredibly rewarding to grow alongside the community we are serving.
2. How has your experience as a Headstream Accelerator cohort supported you and Sol Health? What was your biggest takeaway?
The Headstream Accelerator program provided us with invaluable opportunities to work directly with youth co-creators. Since Sol Health is built for Gen Z, by Gen Z, their feedback was instrumental in shaping our branding and marketing efforts.
The program also connected us with brilliant advisors that we still work with to this day. Through SecondMuse’s extensive network, we were paired with experienced mentors who understood both the mental health landscape and the challenges of building mission-driven companies. These advisors helped us navigate critical decisions around clinical operations, business model sustainability, and scaling strategies. Their ongoing guidance has been invaluable. Many of the frameworks we use today for thinking about provider experience and clinical quality came directly from conversations during and after the accelerator program.
As first-time founders who started the company in college, building a strong personal network is one of the most difficult things, and Headstream has played a pivotal role in helping us do so, connecting us not just with advisors but also with other founders tackling youth mental health challenges in complementary ways.
3. We’ve heard great things about Sol Health. Are there any recent milestones or achievements you can share with us?
One of our most meaningful recent milestones has been launching Sol Sessions, which provides free therapy to nonprofit organizations at no cost to either clients or the nonprofits themselves.
We are currently hosting 150 Graduate Therapists and 20 Associate Therapists as they complete their clinical hours, and in 2025 alone, we completed approximately 20,000 therapy appointments.
We have also partnered with nonprofits like Sad Girls Club to help extend care to underserved communities. Seeing both clients and therapists benefit from the model has been especially rewarding.
4. As Sol Health continues to grow, how are you thinking about expanding your positive impact on youth mental health?
The beauty of Sol Health is that we will naturally stay aligned with the nation’s youth over time. In 10 years, when Gen Alpha becomes the new Gen Z, our clinical team will also include Gen Alpha therapists-in-training.
This generational alignment allows us to remain a strong fit for youth clients from a human connection standpoint. That includes cultural understanding, shared lived experiences, and generational fluency.
We also make it a priority to preserve what makes Sol Health special: our therapists-in-training. By continuing to support them, we can steadily chip away at the nationwide therapist shortage while improving the quality of care for young people.
5. What excites you most about the next stage of Sol Health’s journey?
What excites us most is that we are creating an ecosystem around the therapist-in-training journey. As that ecosystem grows, it naturally creates a strong, tightly knit community of mental health stakeholders passionate about supporting the next generation of clients and therapists.
If we continue to prioritize the long-term future and keep therapists-in-training at the center of what we do, we are confident that Sol Health can become the first mental health company to align incentives across all stakeholders. That alignment will allow us to build a generational brand around youth mental health.
Sol Health team
Where Innovation Meets Care
Sol Health’s model illustrates what becomes possible when innovation centers on people, relationships, and long-term workforce development. By addressing affordability and building the next generation of therapists simultaneously, they are not just expanding access — they are strengthening the foundation of youth mental health care itself.
And yet, their work also reflects a broader truth: no single solution can meet the scale and urgency of today’s mental health demand alone.
The challenge requires coordinated action across supply, demand, and capital. We need models that expand the workforce. We need solutions that lower barriers to care. And we need aligned investment that helps proven approaches reach more communities, faster.
This is where ecosystem building becomes essential.
SecondMuse’s Headstream program is designed to support founders like Sol Health not only by accelerating individual ventures but by laying the groundwork for lasting impact. Through youth co-creation, strategic mentorship, and access to aligned capital, the program helps entrepreneurs refine their models, validate their assumptions and scale responsibly. To date, Headstream alumni have collectively raised over $185 million to scale youth mental health solutions. Ninety-two percent report improved youth engagement capabilities, and 100% have strengthened their growth strategy and networks.
The goal is not innovation for its own sake. It is to identify what works, remove barriers to deployment, and ensure that high-quality, culturally responsive care reaches the young people who need it most.
Sol Health is part of a growing movement proving that when workforce development, affordability and lived experience are integrated into care models, scalable change is possible. The opportunity now is to ensure more solutions like this have the support, capital and ecosystem alignment needed to thrive.
If you’re building what’s next for youth digital well-being, we invite you to apply to the 2026 Headstream Accelerator by March 15, 2026.
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About Sol Health
Sol Health is a digital mental health startup focused on empowering the next generation of therapists to deliver deeply relatable, affordable, and personalized care. Sol Health offers $30/session cash-pay therapy to young adults by connecting them with therapists-in-training who truly understand their lived experiences, and at the same time, provide a best-in-class provider experience for these aspiring therapists as they accrue hours toward licensure—all with the goal to solve both the youth mental health crisis and the nationwide therapist shortage. Learn more at solhealth.co
About Headstream
Headstream, an innovation program by SecondMuse, exists to improve the mental well-being of adolescents, with a focus on systemically excluded communities, including BIPOC, Latino, and LGBTQIA+ individuals. Headstream reshapes how the health, education, and social tech systems prioritize youth mental health. Learn more about our programs at headstreaminnovation.com
About SecondMuse
SecondMuse is a leading innovation firm dedicated to creating economic value through market-driven solutions that generate lasting impact. We work with clients to fuel sustainable growth while delivering measurable benefits for businesses, communities, and the planet. For over 15 years, we have designed, developed, and implemented innovative programs and financial solutions that unlock new opportunities, expand access to capital, and drive economic transformation. Our work spans 185+ countries and territories.
If you’re interested in exploring how to build the infrastructure that connects youth mental health solutions to the institutions that need them, connect with us at jeremy.kamo@secondmuse.com
