Newsletter
Improve Your Life2024-11-11
“All battles are first won or lost, in the mind.”
—Joan of Arc
In medicine in general, and in psychiatry in particular, the current approach is reactive, springing into action when people are ill and suffering. The focus is on fixing damage and risk factors. The problem with this approach is that it is, at that point, more time consuming, expensive, and inefficient.
There are also clear protective factors identified in medicine, and psychiatry. Focusing on powering them up and boosting them before any illness and suffering occur is a faster, cheaper, and more effective way to health and wellness. They also, in the case of psychiatry, carry less stigma.
Checklists are simple but powerful ways to assess and track what needs to be done to improve something. We have developed a simple one for promoting resilience and preventing mental health issues, called Life x Improve. The original research on it, described by us in several papers, was focused on identifying risks for, and preventing suicidality. Suicides are the final, tragic and preventable, common pathway for “Life is Bad” perceptions (suffering, deprivation, shame) in a context of mental health issues. Flipping the script around and focusing on building resilience using the items on the checklist is what Life x Improve digital testing does. It is simple, proactive, and non-stigmatizing.
Veterans in particular have been through a lot of adversity. In honor of Veterans Day, MindX Sciences is offering free testing to all Veterans.