As we are a fourth of the way through the third year of the terrible pandemic, there is an extreme need for mental health services to be available and affordable.

One of the changes this 2022 year will bring is more trauma-informed care. Since 1/6 adults experience 4 traumatic events in their childhood and nearly 61% of adults already have experienced at least one traumatic event in their life, it is imperative to make trauma related care more readily available.

Another change this coming year is blood tests related to mental health. These revolutionary blood tests could look at the RNA in blood to determine certain factors for mental health disorders like depression to see if there is a genetic factor to mood disorders. This new test (still in the beginning stages of testing) could be so effective as to determine what medications would be more effective for someone to take reducing the trial-and-error for some medicines.

Because of the pandemic, telehealth virtually exploded overnight (pun intended). Since the expansion of telehealth, mental health clinicians now currently have full caseloads solely on telehealth. The need and access for telehealth is still improving and while insurance policies already had telehealth as an available option to the patient, it is still a growing and ever-developing means to communicate effectively.

TMS – Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation – is being increasingly used to treat mental health disorders like depression or BPD (bi-polar disorder). The treatments have proven safe and amazingly efficient that the FDA has approved new innovative technologies for TMS like NeuroStar and BrainsWay. TMS stimulates areas of the brain which are known to be underactive in a person with conditions like – mood disorders, ADHD and OCD.

Posted in 2022 News