Stepping into the future of behavioral health: Opportunities, challenges, and possibilities.

To improve our practices of today and to overcome the problems that confront us at present, the behavioral health field must anticipate what the future is likely to bring. Such foresight is particularly important right now because of the changes and disruptions that have occurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past 3 years. We begin by recounting major developments in the mental health field since the founding of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) more than 70 years ago, including some firsthand experiences of the senior author. Subsequently, we review the present situation of the behavioral health field with particular attention to the effects of COVID-19 and our current workforce crisis. Likely future scenarios are then described in two principal domains: clinical developments and community developments. Clinical developments over the next decade are likely to include much more self-directed, integrated, virtual, and personalized care. Community developments are likely to include self-empowering community interventions, better population health management, new collaborations with public health, and continued efforts to address stigma. To increase the probability of the future described, several facilitators are also outlined to create the conditions under which expected future developments can be expected to flourish. These include addressing the behavioral health workforce crisis, modernizing behavioral health clinical training, fostering opportunities for cross-sector work, fostering opportunities to engage in policy issues, creating centers of excellence for innovation in behavioral health, and fostering an integrated framework that undergirds behavioral health. The future we have described holds considerable promise for the behavioral health field and for all who suffer from mental or substance use conditions. We must begin working today to turn this potential future into tomorrow's reality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Evolving definitions of mental illness and wellness.

Understanding of the definitions of wellness and illness has changed from the mid-20th century to modern times, moving from a diagnosis-focused to a person-focused definition of mental illnesses, and from an "absence of disease" model to one that stresses positive psychological function for mental health. Currently, wellness refers to the degree to which one feels positive and enthusiastic about oneself and life, whereas illness refers to the presence of disease. These definitions apply to physical as well as mental illness and wellness. In this article, we build on the essential concepts of wellness and illness, discuss how these definitions have changed over time, and discuss their importance in the context of health reform and health care reform. Health reform refers to efforts focused on health, such as health promotion and the development of positive well-being. Health care reform refers to efforts focused on illness, such as treatment of disease and related rehabilitation efforts.

Mental health and addictions services in resort communities: the case of Martha's Vineyard.

Resort communities face many behavioral health problems and challenges in service delivery. However, few discussions of these issues are present in the literature. Unique needs of rural and resort areas are described using Martha's Vineyard, MA, as a case example. Community strengths and barriers to care are reviewed, and approaches to providing better services offer opportunities for improved care giving.

Improving Data for Behavioral Health Workforce Planning: Development of a Minimum Data Set.

The behavioral health workforce, which encompasses a broad range of professions providing prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation services for mental health conditions and substance use disorders, is in the midst of what is considered by many to be a workforce crisis. The workforce shortage can be attributed to both insufficient numbers and maldistribution of workers, leaving some communities with no behavioral health providers. In addition, demand for behavioral health services has increased more rapidly as a result of federal legislation over the past decade supporting mental health and substance use parity and by healthcare reform. In order to address workforce capacity issues that impact access to care, the field must engage in extensive planning; however, these efforts are limited by the lack of timely and useable data on the behavioral health workforce. One method for standardizing data collection efforts is the adoption of a Minimum Data Set. This article describes workforce data limitations, the need for standardizing data collection, and the development of a behavioral health workforce Minimum Data Set intended to address these gaps. The Minimum Data Set includes five categorical data themes to describe worker characteristics: demographics, licensure and certification, education and training, occupation and area of practice, and practice characteristics and settings. Some data sources align with Minimum Data Set themes, although deficiencies in the breadth and quality of data exist. Development of a Minimum Data Set is a foundational step for standardizing the collection of behavioral health workforce data. Key challenges for dissemination and implementation of the Minimum Data Set are also addressed. SUPPLEMENT INFORMATION: This article is part of a supplement entitled The Behavioral Health Workforce: Planning, Practice, and Preparation, which is sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Congruencies in increased mortality rates, years of potential life lost, and causes of death among public mental health clients in eight states.

INTRODUCTION: Mortality rates are used as global measures of a population's health status and as indicators for public health efforts and medical treatments. Elevated mortality rates among individuals with mental illness have been reported in various studies, but very little focus has been placed on interstate comparisons and congruency of mortality and causes of death among public mental health clients. METHODS: Using age-adjusted death rates, standardized mortality ratios, and years of potential life lost, we compared the mortality of public mental health clients in eight states with the mortality of their state general populations. The data used in our study were submitted by public mental health agencies in eight states (Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia) for 1997 through 2000 during the Sixteen-State Study on Mental Health Performance Measures, a multistate study federally funded by the Center for Mental Health Services in collaboration with the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors. RESULTS: In all eight states, we found that public mental health clients had a higher relative risk of death than the general populations of their states. Deceased public mental health clients had died at much younger ages and lost decades of potential life when compared with their living cohorts nationwide. Clients with major mental illness diagnoses died at younger ages and lost more years of life than people with non-major mental illness diagnoses. Most mental health clients died of natural causes similar to the leading causes of death found nationwide, including heart disease, cancer, and cerebrovascular, respiratory, and lung diseases. CONCLUSION: Mental health and physical health are intertwined; both types of care should be provided and linked together within health care delivery systems. Research to track mortality and primary care should be increased to provide information for additional action, treatment modification, diagnosis-specific risk, and evidence-based practices.

Convergence of service, policy, and science toward consumer-driven mental health care.

BACKGROUND: A common theme is emerging in sentinel reports on the United States health care system. Consumer relevance and demands on service systems and practices are influencing how mental health care is delivered and how systems will be shaped in the future. AIMS OF THE STUDY: The present report seeks to assemble a confluence of consumer-driven themes from noteworthy reports on the state of the mental health system in the U.S. It also explores innovative efforts, promising practices, collaborative efforts, as well as identification of barriers to consumer-directed care, with possible solutions. METHOD: The report reviews the relevant public mental health policy and data used in published work. RESULTS: The findings indicate an increasing public and private interest in promoting consumer-driven care, even though historical systems of care predominate, and often create, barriers to wide-spread redesign of a consumer-centered mental health care system. Innovative consumer-driven practices are increasing as quality, choice, and self-determination become integral parts of a redesigned U.S. mental health care system. DISCUSSION AND LIMITATIONS: The use of consumer-driven approaches in mental health is limited at best. These programs challenge industry norms and traditional practices. Limitations include the need for additional and thorough evaluations of effectiveness (cost and clinical) and replicability of consumer-directed programs. IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH CARE PROVISION AND USE: Consumer-driven services indicate that mental health consumers are expecting to be more participative in their mental health care. This expectation will influence how traditional mental health services and providers become more consumer-centric and meet the demand. IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH POLICIES: Public and private interest in consumer-driven health care range from creating cost-conscious consumers to individualized control of recovery. The health care sector should seek to invest more resources in the provision of consumer-driven health care programs. The results of this study have implications and are informative for other countries where consumer-directed care is delivered in either the private or public health care systems. IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH: More research is needed to obtain further evidence on the use of consumer-driven services and their overall effectiveness.

A neuroscientist-consumer alliance to transform mental health care.

The field of mental health has long suffered from a lack of convergence of disciplines that deal with the mind, the brain, and behavior. This mind-brain dualism has been particularly detrimental for consumers and their families who daily face stigma and discrimination. The understanding of the brain and its dysfunctions has benefited from the study of the human genome and, in particular, of the mutations and variations in its code. This analysis permits a better understanding of the biological basis of mental disease and will soon inform a generation of new diagnostic tools and individualized pharmacological therapies. A biological perspective on mental illness will be complemented by the analysis of the social factors influencing people's behavior and their impact on brain biology and gene function. Neurobiology has progressed to a level for which the knowledge that is generated, even if still colored with uncertainty, could represent a catalyst for the creation of an alliance between neuroscientists and consumers. This partnership has the potential to benefit both parties but will require some concrete steps that might be outside of the usual courses of action for both consumers and scientists. It is by building collaborations based on personal contact and information sharing that a transformation of the mental health care system can occur.

Excess mortality due to depression and anxiety in the United States: results from a nationally representative survey.

OBJECTIVES: We compared the mortality of persons with and without anxiety and depression in a nationally representative survey and examined the role of socioeconomic factors, chronic diseases and health behaviors in explaining excess mortality. METHODS: The 1999 National Health Interview Survey was linked with mortality data through 2011. We calculated the hazard ratio (HR) for mortality by presence or absence of anxiety/depression and evaluated potential mediators. We calculated the population attributable risk of mortality for anxiety/depression. RESULTS: Persons with anxiety/depression died 7.9 years earlier than other persons. At a population level, 3.5% of deaths were attributable to anxiety/depression. Adjusting for demographic factors, anxiety/depression was associated with an elevated risk of mortality [HR=1.61, 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.40, 1.84]. Chronic diseases and health behaviors explained much of the elevated risk. Adjusting for demographic factors, people with past-year contact with a mental health professional did not demonstrate excess mortality associated with anxiety/depression while those without contact did. CONCLUSIONS: Anxiety/depression presents a mortality burden at both individual and population levels. Our findings are consistent with targeting health behaviors and physical illnesses as strategies for reducing this excess mortality among people with anxiety/depression.

Screening for serious mental illness in the general population.

BACKGROUND: Public Law 102-321 established a block grant for adults with "serious mental illness" (SMI) and required the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to develop a method to estimate the prevalence of SMI. METHODS: Three SMI screening scales were developed for possible use in the SAMHSA National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: the Composite International Diagnostic Interview Short-Form (CIDI-SF) scale, the K10/K6 nonspecific distress scales, and the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule (WHO-DAS). An enriched convenience sample of 155 respondents was administered all screening scales followed by the 12-month Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV and the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF). We defined SMI as any 12-month DSM-IV disorder, other than a substance use disorder, with a GAF score of less than 60. RESULTS: All screening scales were significantly related to SMI. However, neither the CIDI-SF nor the WHO-DAS improved prediction significantly over the K10 or K6 scales. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of SMI was 0.854 for K10 and 0.865 for K6. The most efficient screening scale, K6, had a sensitivity (SE) of 0.36 (0.08) and a specificity of 0.96 (0.02) in predicting SMI. CONCLUSIONS: The brevity and accuracy of the K6 and K10 scales make them attractive screens for SMI. Routine inclusion of either scale in clinical studies would create an important, and heretofore missing, crosswalk between community and clinical epidemiology.

Growth of mental health services in state adult correctional facilities, 1988 to 2000.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined trends in the availability and use of mental health services in state adult correctional facilities. METHODS: Results from the 1988 Inventory of Mental Health Services in State Adult Correctional Facilities of the Center for Mental Health Services were compared with those from the 2000 Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities survey of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The two surveys were chosen because they occurred more than a decade apart, had a reasonable amount of data, and could be made comparable. RESULTS: This analysis used data from 757 state adult correctional facilities that were sampled in 1988. The number of such facilities increased to 1,097 in 2000, a 44.9 percent increase. A dramatic increase was also seen in the prison population, from 505,712 in 1988 to 1,084,625 in 2000, a 114.5 percent increase. Mental health services were offered in significantly more facilities in 2000 than in 1988. However, the relative percentage of facilities that offered mental health services decreased overall. Simultaneously, the percentage of inmates who used these services increased overall. CONCLUSIONS: The growth in prison facilities and the growth in prisoner populations are outstripping the more meager growth in mental health services. These results suggest that mental health services are becoming less available to the prison population, and service populations are becoming more concentrated in the facilities that do offer such services.

A Healthy New World: Emergent Opportunities for Clinical Psychologists in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is radically transforming the health and mental health care landscape. Emergent opportunities exist for clinical psychologists to redefine their role in healthcare. We reflect on the Chor and colleagues article (this issue) elucidating key issues for psychologists, and present additional recommendations for consideration. Specifically, we highlight three points: (1) moving beyond just training and hoping; (2) recovery, not just symptom reduction; and (3) it's a healthy new world. Under each of these points, we suggest tactics for how to achieve these goals.

Changing trends in state psychiatric hospital use from 2002 to 2005.

OBJECTIVE: National surveys have shown dramatic declines in the number of residents in state psychiatric hospitals since the 1950s and in the number of admissions since the 1970s. However, data from 2002 and 2005 indicate a reversal of these long-term trends. The objective of this study was to present the new data and to advocate for research on the factors contributing to these changes. METHODS: This study is based on state-level data submitted annually to the Center for Mental Health Services. The 11 states showing increases in admissions and residents between 2002 and 2005 were surveyed by telephone about the factors leading to the changes. RESULTS: Between 2002 and 2005, the number of admissions nationwide increased 21.1%, and the number of residents increased by 1.0%. State mental health agency staff attributed the increases principally to one factor-the increase in the number of forensic admissions and residents. Staff also identified increases in the number of admissions with schizophrenia (increased 23.2%) and affective disorders (increased 16.3%) as a second factor, plus declines in the availability of housing and community-based care providers. CONCLUSIONS: The reversal of long-term trends may signal threats to the goal of community-based mental health care. Research is urgently needed to examine the factors associated with these increases. Potential factors to be investigated include the increase in the number of forensic admissions and the antecedents of this phenomenon, increases in the number of admissions with schizophrenia, the changing capacity of general hospital inpatient psychiatric services in the community, and changes in the demographic makeup of American society, reflected in an aging population and increased racial-ethnic diversity.

The integration of physical health and behavioral health services: three university case examples.

To improve the quality of care, the Institute of Medicine has called for the integration of mental health and substance use care with primary care services. This article reports three case studies of service integration efforts in universities. The results provide support for the feasibility of such initiatives. In the three case studies, service integration proved to be both clinically and financially feasible.

National estimates for mental health mutual support groups, self-help organizations, and consumer-operated services.

The authors report on a 2002 national survey of mental health mutual support groups (MSG) and self-help organizations (SHO) run by and for mental health consumers and/or family members, and consumer-operated services (COS). They found 7,467 of these groups and organizations-3,315 MSGs, 3,019 SHOs, and 1,133 COSs-greatly eclipsing the number of traditional mental health organizations (4,546). MSGs reported that 41,363 people attended their last meetings. SHOs reported a total of 1,005,400 members. COSs reported serving 534,551 clients/members in 1 year. The array of services and supports provided within each of these types (MSG, SHO, COS) is reported, and implications for the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health recommendations are explicated.

Quality of care measures for the treatment of bipolar disorder.

The staff of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education (APIRE), and a national panel of experts in bipolar disorder and practice guideline development have collaborated to generate a set of quality of care indicators for the pharmacologic and psychosocial treatment of bipolar disorder. The indicators were derived from APA's evidence-based Practice Guideline for the Treatment of Patients with Bipolar Disorder, 2002 (1) and the Expert Consensus Guideline Series: Medication Treatment of Bipolar Disorder, 2000 (2) These quality indicators can be used for quality monitoring, benchmarking, and quality improvement efforts across health plans, systems of care, and health care providers to improve quality and outcomes of care for patients with bipolar disorder.