Once upon a time, the future of mental health treatment was drugs. The advent of Prozac and whole class of similar medication in the 1990s gave doctors an easy optionand big pharma easy money.
But 20 years on, the problems have not gone away. In fact, mental illness is much more pervasive, with depression now the world’s second biggest cause of disability.
Moreover, a dramatic reduction in drug research and development suggests pills will not be the only – or even the primary – answer to mental health problems in the long term.
But what will be?
The laboratory
One reason Sergiu Pasca, assistant professor at Stanford University, went into research after completing medical training was his frustration when he saw what oncologists could do for their patients and how limited he and his colleagues were in treating mental health problems.
This was partly to do with the difference in funding for cancer and mental health research. But there was also the question of access.
[For more of this story, written by Kate Lyons, go to https://www.theguardian.com/wo...tal-health-treatment]
Comments (0)