Outro has secured $7M across pre-seed and seed financing to expand a platform designed around safe medication discontinuation, starting with antidepressants. Listen Ventures, Cake Ventures, Jason Calacanis’s LAUNCH, Actions Capital, Hannah Grey VC and Pave Health Ventures participated in the rounds.
The company addresses what most of the healthcare system has overlooked. Roughly one in six Americans currently uses an antidepressant, average treatment duration has climbed past five years, and the medications gained regulatory approval based on trials lasting eight to twelve weeks. Thirty years later, no widely recognized, scientifically grounded method exists for stopping them safely.
Research conducted by Outro co-founder Dr. Mark Horowitz revealed that four out of five individuals on long-term antidepressant therapy cannot discontinue treatment not because underlying symptoms resurface but because withdrawal effects block successful tapering. Deprescribing receives minimal attention in physician training, which means doctors and patients often attempt discontinuation with little institutional support or validated protocols.
Signs of broader recognition are emerging. Deprescribing guidelines backed by scientific evidence have become a priority at the Department of Health and Human Services, which coordinates this work through partnerships with the American Psychiatric Association and the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology. That shift suggests policy frameworks are catching up to clinical realities.
Outro plans to invest the capital in extending its approach to additional medication categories and supporting collaborative research initiatives with academic partners.
