A disturbing trend continues to emerge – political tribalism, drug overdoses, social media addiction, and similar social dysfunctions. To gauge the true level of mental health issues in America, and its myriad causes, we invited neurologists and psychiatrists to provide their expert opinion on this topic. Here’s what they shared…
“Mental health care has been disserved by its emphasis on diagnoses that are unreliable and more misleading than helpful, and by an overemphasis on medications that are by and large symptomatic treatment only and of low efficacy which has has persisted for decades--despite "block buster" additions--with considerable side effects...”
"The stress of the isolation and the lack of certainty in everything from government to family to friends and occupation has unroofed the simmering sense of futility and invisibility that are at the base of depressive and anxiety disorders."
It goes without saying that the pandemic, and our society’s reaction to it, has served to accelerate the trend of increased incidents of emotional dysfunction and mental duress. Isolation, job insecurity, increased social media usage have combined to create a potent brew of mental health challenges that are overwhelming mental health professionals.
“ We are facing a significant shortage of physicians. Although there is significant expansion of other providers like PAs and NPs, the loss of additional training of psychiatrists and physicians may lead to a decline in the overall quality of care. I feel there is a significant loss of the time spent with patients to provide care and the use of electronic health care records at this point has not made a significant impact in the quality of the provider/patient relationship. There still needs to be a significant amount of time needed to dig out useful information form a EMR to guide quality medical care.”
When we did research on this topic just a few years ago we learned that mental health professionals were, for the most part, overworked, frustrated, desperate, and desperately needed better support. Conditions for patients and providers alike have only gotten worse. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? At this point, we won’t even venture a guess.
Radiology is the early adopter of technology of healthcare. Need proof? The majority (73%) of holdouts in adopting speech recognition have plans to finally take the plunge.
We received a tremendous response from physicians in a wide variety of specialties. Regardless of their discipline, all are frustrated to one extent or another. Here are the top reasons physicians are reaching the end of their tethers.
In concert with BYU’s Department of Public Health we conducted in-depth research with provider organizations across the country on social determinants of health (SDoH).