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Dear friends of Access Institute,
May is mental health month, and it's time for us to recognize the mental health challenges we face as individuals and as a society. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the issue of social disconnection to the forefront, leading to increased loneliness and isolation and higher rates of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. The US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, recently declared loneliness and social disconnection as national problems, ones that deserve urgent attention.
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By Bart Magee, Ph.D.
A new generation of A.I. technologies released this spring shocked the world with its power, the extent of which we are only beginning to comprehend. The awareness that we are just at the floppy-disc phase of their development adds to our collective shudder—and awe. I have no doubt that A.I. will fundamentally change mental healthcare. While the opportunities are tremendous, I do have profound concerns about the potential for harm not only to individual patients, but for our collective mental health. By Bart Magee Ph.D.
January has arrived and along with it the yearly ritual of resolutions and making efforts to follow through on commitments for self-improvement. More and more, those commitments include starting therapy. We in the mental health community wholly support those intentions, but we also know that for so many (and if you’d tried it you know) finding and affording a therapist has only gotten more and more challenging. The first part is where to start. Does one just start Google searching? Do you ask a friend, your doctor, your yoga teacher? It all can seem so random. And what kind of therapist will be the right one? Aren’t there lots of different kinds of therapy? How does one know which is best? Access Institute matters more than ever. We are deeply dedicated to providing a mental health safety net for those with the greatest needs. Our impact is immediate, broad, deep and extensive.
By Bart Magee, Ph.D.
News of the strike of mental health providers at Kaiser Permanente was the latest in a stream of stories of a mental healthcare system stretched far beyond its limits by a growing post-pandemic demand for care and a shortage of psychotherapists, psychiatrists and other providers. This crisis of care started well before the pandemic and will take many years to resolve. In the middle of it all, we are seeing the fruits of the research in psychedelic medicine lead to an explosion of interest in their potential, which begs a critical question: will the recent advances in psychedelic medicine and coming FDA approval of treatments help us expand treatment options and effectiveness help to mitigate the mental healthcare crisis? |
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