Time to overhaul US mental health to include alternative mental health methods.

Is it time to overhaul US mental health to include alternative mental health methods?

In the January 2011 issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, several eminent scientists highlight important points that will need to be addressed before the mental health care system in the US can be overhauled, including:

• Understanding what works and for whom: It won’t matter which treatments work unless we know who will benefit most. “In the absence of such knowledge, we risk treatment decisions guided by accessibility to resources rather than patient needs…”
• Integrating several levels of care: “…only a comprehensive and integrated public health model can adequately address the pervasive societal problems that underlie our country’s mental health needs.” We must distribute resources equally from the prevention to intervention stages of the treatment process.
• Identifying optimal methods of delivery: “methods that use less therapist time, less client time, minimize client transportation costs as well as brick-and-mortar space, and use less of other increasingly scarce and costly resources.”

I’d add one more – studying and integrating effective alternative therapies. Even traditional native therapies have their place in the right environment. Others, like hypnotherapy, have already been proven effective in more goal-oriented outcomes like academic improvement and smoking cessation and I feel should be included as options.

Sources: Association for Psychological Science (2011, September 15). “Revisiting Psychotherapy.”