Mental Healthcare Transformation
I’m a psychiatrist I think I was born to be a psychiatrist because I find everything about my specialty fascinating mental illness is our brain disorders and I think our brain is our most compelling complex organ every brain is unique as unique as each individual which is why Mental Health Care needs to be personalized to meet each individual’s needs when someone is living with a mental illness they often feel very alone and those who love and support them also suffer Psychiatry can be a very sad and difficult specialty because mental illnesses are always associated with distress and suffering sometimes just asking for help is really difficult and even when someone does ask for help the help is not there are lots of reasons why people have trouble getting the right care for their mental illness when you have a mental illness even the most simple activities can feel difficult or even impossible sometimes you need a nudge from someone who cares just to get out the door Consulting with a primary care provider like a family doctor nurse practitioner is the right place to start when looking for help in fact most people never see a psychiatrist at all Primary Care Providers are trained to care for the whole person not just one part and the vast majority of mental illnesses are diagnosed and treated by them they work to help their patient find the right path to recovery but mental illnesses are difficult to diagnose and treat even for psychiatrists in fact more than 50 percent of initial psychiatric diagnoses are not accurate which is a real barrier to recovery a major reason for misdiagnosis is that mental illnesses are complex and we don’t have lab tests or x-rays to confirm a diagnosis and if a diagnosis is incorrect everything that follows isn’t optimal but we do have validated diagnostic Frameworks like the DSM-5 and measurement tools called clinical scales these tools help Health Care Professionals to make correct psychiatric diagnoses and when the diagnosis is Right patients are more likely to start on the right treatment and get better faster of course we can’t fix everything that’s wrong with our Mental Health Care system at once but improving access to high quality psychiatric guidance is an important and viable First Step these tools in a clinician’s hands will improve the speed and accuracy of diagnosis which puts their patients on the road to effective treatment and Recovery sooner family practitioners bear the weight of mental health care in this country supporting them with better tools helps to lift that weight which gives them the opportunity to provide more effective Compassionate Care I know that compassion is at the heart of Health Care compassion for my patients and also compassion for myself it’s time to use the power of technology to alleviate suffering and make room for compassion in mental health care bringing hope and health to everyone in The Circle of Care
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