1. Trauma informed-care:
Almost 61% of adults experienced trauma at least once in their lifetime. This is why clinicians, healthcare practitioners, educators and mental health professionals are supporting trauma informed-care. To be effective, trauma informed-care needs to be a holistic approach that takes into consideration and tackles with treatments strengths versus weaknesses of the individual.
2. Psychedelics research to treat mental illnesses:
Recent findings showed that psychedelics such as MDMA, LDS, ketamine and psilocybin can be helpful in the treatment of specific mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and more. Research on this field is progressing, although it will take many years before being offered as therapy.
3. Virtual reality for chronic patients and care:
Recently, the FDA approved marketing for a program involving virtual reality (VR) to reduce chronic pain as alternative choice to opioids. The virtual reality programs teach to the chronic patients how to deal with pain sensations in their body and throughout this the patients will learn different behavioral and cognitive skills on how respond in an effective way to the pain and cope with the derived stress.
4. Blood tests for mental illness:
In April 2021, researchers developed a blood test that is able to test the individual for mental illnesses. The researchers suggest that biological markers for mental health disorders can be found in RNA biomarkers. In addition, the test can determine the severity of depression and the risk of developing, in the future, a more severe form of depression and bipolar disorder. This innovation is still at its early stage, but it could be revolutionary on the diagnosis process of mental health conditions.
5. Rise in critical behavioral health support:
After the economic crisis in 2008 and Covid-19 Pandemic, that both caused rises in mental-behavior problems, such as anxiety, substance abuse, and suicides related to job loss, governments and institutional leaders started to look forward to implementing mental-behavioral health programs. For leaders it is important to understand how mental and behavioral health are connected. From this, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is now in use to help employees understand how their behavior, physiology and thoughts affect their well-being.
