Our country is facing a national mental health crisis. About half of the U.S. population will experience a major mental health issue during their lifetime, and approximately 20% of the population has a diagnosable mental health condition in any given year. The country has a shortage of roughly 250,000 behavioral health professionals. The U.S. cannot clinically treat our way out of the crisis we are in.
The healthcare industry has demonstrated its ability to move towards a population health model of care for physical health, but it’s lagging behind in behavioral health. People suffering with mental health conditions progress to the point where they need more significant medical intervention, such as regular therapy and medications, and contribute to the dramatically higher costs associated with patients with comorbidities of mental and physical health challenges.
The solution is to get involved upstream – to blend behavioral health early intervention with seamless navigation to professional care. We call this Population Behavioral Health.
The Dilemma
Although mental health is a more widely discussed topic in recent years than it has been historically, there are still barriers, such as stigma and access, that hinder people from accessing the resources and care they need. Roughly 75% of people with a mind wellness issue will choose to work on their health by themselves without the help of a professional, but 95% of resources used in self-care have not been scientifically evaluated for effectiveness.
The Solution: Both Providers and Payers Play a Prominent Role
Providers and payers both play a role in the ecosystem as it relates to early prevention and intervention in mental health. Population Mental Health is a systemic approach to improving a populations’ mental health including clinical, consumer, community and policy components.
To accelerate their ability to make the transition to Population Mental Health, CredibleMind created a new kind of platform that enables both provider and payer organizations to deliver, at scale, these essential capabilities: 1) evidence-based self-care approaches, curated, personalized, and delivered digitally on over 100 mental health and wellbeing topics, and 2) smart digital navigation using validated screenings and customized triage rules to streamline access to personalized clinical services. The result? For those at lower risk, it delivers immediate access to resources that help them, and their families, stay mentally well. For those with higher risk, the entire behavioral health intake process gets streamlined, personalized, saving time and money, and setting the stage for more cost-effective outcomes.
A rapidly growing number of healthcare organizations, insurers, and communities are now getting onboard to support this new paradigm. To date, organizations across over 200 communities with reach to over 40 million Americans – nearly 12% of the population – have made this platform available to their patients, members, or communities. And early, but powerful evidence that Population Mental Health works, is emerging.
The Impact
The Monterey County Behavioral Health Department (MCBH), which serves over 430,000 citizens, implemented the CredibleMind Platform to address mental health and substance use disorders, and saw dramatic results. In 2023 community engagement tripled and underserved populations with unmet needs were reached. MCBH saw over 30,000 platform users compared to the 13,150 in-person clients in 2022— 95% of which had never received behavioral health services from MCBH. Additionally, the county saw statistically significant cost reductions, reversing the upward trend of recent years.
It’s vital that the healthcare system address the growing mental health crisis it is facing. Technologies that are providing the reliable resources that will meet people where they are to educate them and allow them to care for their own mental health are revolutionizing the meaning of early intervention in mental health.
To learn more, join the CredibleMind team, and attend our panel at Becker’s Healthcare Payer Issues Roundtable in Chicago on April 28-29.
