The psychiatrist's couch is being replaced by a video screen.
No, people with behavioral issues aren’t flocking to reruns of Frasier. They're finding doctors who can treat them at any time and any place, in the comfort of their own homes – through video conferencing, text messaging, even specialized apps that enable users to get the information they need at a moment of crisis.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 25 percent of the population suffers from some sort of event each year, be it insomnia, stress, anxiety or mood changes, and about 6 percent is living with a serious condition such as depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia (that percentage jumps considerably in the U.S. military, among the nation's veterans and in jobs of high stress, like police and fire departments).
Just mention Robin Williams, and the seriousness of the issue becomes clear.
Recently, American Well and MDLIVE, two of the larger players in the telehealth market, announced expansions of their behavioral health platforms. Another well-known tech company, Brother International, says its videoconferencing arm is seeing a surge in business from mental health professionals.
"The big thing about behavioral health is we don't lay hands on patients," says Jennifer Gentile, MM, PsyD, an instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, who has been named the head of American Well's new Amwell Therapy Associates. "And it's more difficult for these types of patients to get through barriers" to get healthcare.
The reasons for this surge are numerous, and they mirror the healthcare industry as a whole. First, due to a shortage of behavioral health professionals, they're in much demand and have a finite amount of time in their office, so that time spent on face-to-face meetings is limited and quite pricey. Second, people with behavioral issues generally don't want to visit a doctor's office, and would much prefer talking with a doctor in familiar surroundings. They're also in need of immediate help when a healthcare crisis occurs, and can greatly benefit from a real-time link to a caregiver.
"Mental health is not always easily accessed; at best it can often be described as cumbersome," Gentile wrote in a recent blog. "The usual way to find a therapist is to look at the back of your insurance card and call the phone number or look online. Once you have a list, you have to narrow down candidates by geographic location, education and training, and then inquire as to whether or not the therapist has room in their schedule to take a new patient."
Courtney Behrens, a senior marketing manager at Brother International, said telepsychiatry and telecounseling customers are flocking to the company's OmniJoin web conferencing solution because it fulfills a need for a secure, HIPAA-compliant platform by which doctors can talk to patients in their own homes. In fact, many smaller offices and clinics are using the company's cloud-based solution because it's easy to set up and use.
"It's hard for a lot of these (doctors) to actually get in front of a patient," she said. "This helps them build out their business and see more patients."
Jim Mountain, president of Pittsburgh-based Secure Telehealth, which uses the OmniJoin platform, said in in a testimonial provided by Brother that his organizations has found videoconferencing to be effective.
“Telepsychiatry is an effective way to provide access to psychiatric care for individuals living in underserved areas," Mountain said. "It has become one of the most successful of all the telemedicine applications because its practitioners don’t need to touch their patients to treat them."
MDLIVE recently acquired Breakthrough Behavioral, a Silicon Valley-based teletherapy provider. Company CEO Randy Parker said the acquisition enables Florida-based MDLIVE to advance its work with the payer and employer markets to offer real-time access to mental health services. And Breakthrough president Julian Cohen added in a prepared statement that the deal creates "an integrated integrated physical and behavioral health platform for patients."
The problem is an acute one for the U.S. military, which sees a high number of veterans returning from overseas duty with some version of post-traumatic stress disorder (70 percent of the nation's military population is also younger than 30, an age group with a higher incidence of behavioral issues). The National Center for Telehealth and Technology has been working with the Department of Defense to push psychological care out to more members of the military community through telehealth visits and mHealth apps like PTSD Coach.
Apps, in fact, are becoming the tool of choice for helping healthcare providers identify whether people have behavioral issues and also enabling consumers themselves to identify those issues. There are apps that allow users to track moods and learn how to breathe properly, even web programs that can plumb a user's social media channels and identify messages with troubling content (such as Tweets from a user who might be considering suicide).
Gentile said news events like Williams' suicide and that of the girlfriend of NBA player Ryan Anderson, focus public attention on mental health issues, which are much more prevalent than most people realize. They also point out that getting help isn't as easy as sitting on a couch in some office and talking to a therapist – mental health crises can occur at any time and place, and need an immediate interaction and support.
"People want to get out of their distress now," she said.
