The keys to better mental health care in 2025? Accuracy, Personalization and Progress

Our nation has been experiencing a mental health crisis for several years, marked by an alarming increase in mental illness that shows no signs of slowing down. 23% of adults experienced a mental illness in the past year, compared to 18% in 2008.

Some good news is that mental health challenges are gradually becoming less stigmatized, empowering more individuals to seek help. In fact, the rate of adults who requested and the medication taken is increased from 19% in 2019 to 22% in 2023. However, up to 60% of people with mental health problems do not respond to conventional treatments such as therapy or medications. This is a disturbing figure.

All of this tells us that patients want help, but as a society, we are not always giving them the help they need. Something has to change. And quickly.

Psychiatry must move away from a one-size-fits-all approach. The numbers don’t lie. Instead, we should move to exploring ways to increase accuracy, which may include different personalization approaches, in order to accelerate progress. There was a time when mental illness treatment options for patients were very limited. But in recent years, technology has made tremendous strides. We now have the ability to diagnose and treat with data-driven insights and deliver measurable results. It is up to us as providers to ensure that we are continually adopting the latest, proven technology and treatment modalities that can benefit our patients.

Accuracy and customization

Depression is one of them the most common mental disorders in the United States. When a patient receives a diagnosis of depression, they are often prescribed antidepressant medications, most commonly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Providers have not always had tools that allow them to assess the efficacy of a particular antidepressant medication for that specific patient before prescribing it. However, advances in medicine now enable us to be more precise and personalized in the care of each patient.

In addition, doctors can use measurement feedback systems to collect data on patient progress during treatment using technology. Studies suggest that when doctors use this technology for patients with depression and anxiety, there may be potential benefits in outcomes achieved by different treatment modalities.

Future AI technologies may assist doctors by analyzing patterns in both patient data and published research to suggest possible treatment options. While still in development, such tools may one day support healthcare providers in making more personalized treatment decisions based on a broader analysis of clinical evidence.

More specific diagnoses and treatments are particularly challenging without the identification of applicable biomarkers. But some progress has been made in this area as well. Researchers believe they have found a number of biomarkers for depressionincluding neurotransmitters, endocrine hormones, metabolic agents and inflammatory substances. Some biomarkers are believed to give insight into the disease, such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor, cortisol and serotonin. They can be discovered through aptasensors AND electrochemical immunosensors(tools that recognize specific molecules).

When it comes to advances in precision and personalized mental health care, these approaches are just scratching the surface. We now have the opportunity to explore the possible adaptation of therapeutic modalities to better suit the patient’s individual learning style. There are apps now available to the public that allow users to track their moods and choose meditations based on their stress levels. Researchers are now studying the possible use of biofeedback as a complementary treatment for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to observe their heart rate changes and then learn relaxation techniques. The possibilities are endless.

With such data and knowledge, researchers hope to expand the number of tools that can become available to more effectively diagnose and prescribe treatments. All of this advances the goal of increasing precision and tailoring personalized treatments to provide our patients with more relief and better results.

Progress

In addition to technologies that can significantly improve the way we diagnose and treat mental illness, we need to look at advances in the treatments themselves. It’s easier to order medications we’ve been recommending for years. But with so many patients failing these modalities, we need to look at more data and other effective treatment options.

With the significant number of patients not responding to medications, many remain hopeless. For many people, their story does not end well. For some “luckier” people, they or their loved ones somehow find the energy to keep pushing themselves to find a solution that will work—sometimes after decades of trying and failing prescription drugs.

Today approx one in ten Americans12 years and older, take an antidepressant. Unfortunately, however, we have seen significant increases in rates of mental illness. It is our job to give our patients a better future with treatments that can work best for them.

As an industry, we need to ensure that we continue to develop these technologies to make them seamless and easy for clinicians to adopt. As physicians, we must adapt and adopt, always keeping an eye out for the latest technologies and treatments that can benefit our patients. This is our obligation to them.

Photo: Benjavisa, Getty Images

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