How Howie Mandel turned a panic attack into a mental health movement and helped build a company now worth hundreds of millions

The first time Howie Mandel told the world he had OCD, he didn’t mean to. He was on The Howard Stern Show, spiraling into a panic attack because he didn’t want to open the door. He just couldn’t get past touching the doorknob and leaving the studio, and what he didn’t realize is he no longer was thinking that: the words came out before he could stop them. It was aired on Stern’s show, Mandel left the studio, and found himself contemplating his career and life on the busy New York City street. His thoughts and anxiety getting the best of him, the train of thought broke finally when a stranger walked up and said: “I just heard you on Stern. Me too.” Howie Mandel said hearing others tell him they two experience what he did was the first time he felt some comfort. Brian Smith. “It was the first time I connected with somebody else,” Mandel told Fortune in a lengthy interview. “It was the first comfort I got, which I didn’t have for 40-some odd years—it was to articulate, explain, and understand what was going on in here,” he said while tapping on his noggin while sitting before a wall display of perfectly aligned fedoras. That accidental confession, followed by the encounter with the stranger on the sidewalk, set in motion a two-decade arc that now finds Mandel as the public face of NOCD, a virtual therapy company that has grown into the largest telehealth provider specializing in OCD treatment. NOCD, last valued at nearly $270 million in 2024, currently provides at least a million therapy sessions annually, with more than 140 million people able to access it through their insurance. This past January, the company announced its acquisition of Rebound Health, a PTSD-focused platform, launching a parent brand called Noto, named after the AI-powered software that has fueled its growth. Mandel, born in 1955, says he has no recollection of living without OCD. The rituals, the compulsions, the germ fears,