Newsletter

From Reactive to Proactive2023-10-02

Most issues in life, as well as healthcare in general, and mental health in particular, are addressed when they become distressing, acute, and/or impairing. The motivation to do something about things at that point is higher, but the solution is more time consuming, expensive, and imperfect.

Moving towards doing things early, when they require less effort, and are easy to fix, seems obvious. Yet things do not get done proactively. Motivation is a problem, people get distracted and side-tracked by seemingly more urgent things and by addictions. Not just biological and chemical, but in particular informational/digital addictions, in this day and age.

The solution is to make preventive actions in mental health the routine, default option, that does not require a decision whether to do them or not. Making things easy, affordable, with measurable and actionable results will help. Integrating them in primary care first and foremost, rather than specialized mental health settings. For example, once a year, at their annual exam, people should get Life x Improve, our digital risk evaluation and mitigation tool for suicide prevention. It takes 5-10 minutes to do, and provides a number for risk and personalized risk reduction plan for social determinants of suicide risk. At home, in between appointments, they can keep track of how they feel and think using our easy to use, diverse, customizable and comprehensive Life x Mind app. Adding our MindX One Liquid Biopsy as another blood test tube to their annual labs will help with early identification of risk factors, objective assessment, matching to preventive treatments, and monitoring of response to treatments. All these advances are here, they are just not evenly distributed, to paraphrase William Gibson. My teams are working hard to make more accessible and affordable these precision health advances.

Live. Happier. Longer.