What is precision mental health and why do we need it?

You wouldn’t wear the exact same suit or dress that someone else is wearing, rather than one that actually fits your size, body type, personality, interests and current situation, right? So why expect one single approach, or one set of approaches to mental health, to work for everyone?

Ultimately, psychology and mental health is much more complex than buying clothes. One size or style definitely does not fit all. Rather, different mental health approaches need to be tailored to different people’s characteristics, environments, and situations, which leads to the concept of precision mental health.

The word “precision” means bringing more accuracy or precision to prevention, diagnosis, and treatment methods. In the case of precision mental health, it pertains to mental health. There is certainly no shortage of approaches to prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of mental health. Over the years, scientific research has provided more and more insight into what influences mental health and how to address these different factors and processes. There are now many different treatment programs, books, lectures, apps, and a variety of medications. If you want to address a mental health issue, you definitely have more options today than you did a few decades ago.

However, many statistics suggest that mental health in the United States and countries around the world has continued to deteriorate over the past few decades. For example, a 2021 survey by the American Psychological Association showed that the demand for psychologists treating anxiety and depression increased from 2020 to 2021, continuing an upward trend that began before the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Youth Mental Health Survey found that 42% of those surveyed in 2021 reported “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness,” a significant increase from 28% in 2011. And a study published in 2023 found that The Lancet Psychiatry Based on a survey of more than 150,000 adults across 29 countries, the study predicts that one in two people worldwide will develop a mental illness in their lifetime.

So why is it that with more options for mental health prevention and treatment, we are not seeing a decline in mental health issues among the population? Why are we seeing trends in the opposite direction instead? One possible explanation is that many environmental, social, political, and economic conditions in our society have continued to change over the past few decades. For example, social media has gone from being a shining light (or some would call it a twinkle) in Silicon Valley’s eyes to a mainstream form of social interaction. And much has been written about the potential negative effects of social media on mental health.

Social media may be exacerbating an already existing problem: people are spending less and less time in person with one another. The 2023 U.S. Surgeon General’s report, “The Loneliness and Social Isolation Epidemic,” describes how Americans are feeling less and less connected to one another and becoming more and more lonely. Indeed, the phrase “times are a changing” applies to past decades in these and other ways, which means that mental health approaches that may have worked in the past may no longer be as accurate or effective.

Another major possible reason is that there may be a lack of coordination in how different mental health approaches are applied. The right mix of programs, apps, and other options may not be offered and implemented in the right way for the right people. When new mental health approaches are promoted on social media and elsewhere, there is a tendency to suggest that the approach will work for everyone, or to fail to specify who will and will least benefit from the approach. In other words, we need to ask how the different mental health approaches available are being used.

A third problem is that many mental health approaches currently focus on addressing the effects of mental health problems, rather than the root causes. For example, medications may help reduce symptoms, but may not address the environmental, social, developmental, or other factors that caused the condition in the first place. Chasing the consequences of a problem, rather than actively addressing its causes, can make an approach much less effective and, as you would expect, much less accurate.

The past decade has seen the rise of more precision approaches to health and healthcare in general. In his 2015 State of the Union address, then-President Barack Obama noted the launch of the White House Precision Medicine Initiative. The White House described the initiative as “healthcare tailored to you,” and called for a break from the historical trend in which “most medical procedures have been designed for the ‘average patient.'” And what’s designed for the average patient can, surprisingly, lead to very average outcomes.

Since then, more and more health-related precision medicine terms and approaches have emerged. For example, in 2022 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched the Nutrition for Precision Medicine (NPH) Consortium, which I covered until 2019. ForbesThere is also a term called precision population health, which I Forbes The year is 2023. Eventually, we will be able to put the word “precision” in front of virtually any health or medical term: precision oncology, precision epidemiology, even precision proctology.

In either case, increasing precision means better understanding and addressing the entire system of factors that may be affecting each individual for whom we care, diagnose, treat, or otherwise assist. In the case of mental health, this system is highly complex and varies widely from person to person. An individual’s mental health situation depends on what happened early in their life (from their upbringing to their early childhood environmental exposures), what is happening in their life (from their workplace and family situations to their diet and physical activity), and what is going to happen soon in their life. Thus, increasing precision in mental health requires us to further unravel this complex system using a more systems approach.

Our society is at a tipping point. We are in the midst of a growing mental health crisis. At the same time, we are seeing an increase in data, scientific information, technology, including computer-based approaches such as artificial intelligence (AI), and more options for mental health prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Will all of this combine to help tailor mental health approaches to different populations and their needs, or will it promote a one-size-fits-all approach? That is the question.