Name: Creating Preventative Mental Health Care
Uploaded: 2019-04-03
Duration: 9 min 55 s
Description: A behind-the-curtain look at a brand new, cutting-edge program that’s taking mental well-being to the next level.

I am just really to be having this conversation with Dr. Maine who is not only a surgeon a teacher and the dean of Samford School of Medicine since 2012 but also I'm very lucky to say a friend, a mentor and on thrive global scientific advisory board. So, Lloyd, there's so much we can talk about but mental health has been on everybody's mind and we've heard the gruesome statistics. And between the explosion of mental health problems and the skyrocketing Growth of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. The role precision has, that you've instituted at Stanford, has is more important than ever. Can you tell us more about precision health, and how do you see Certainly is a great privilege now to be here with you today and I wanna thank you for the way you have focused attention on issues described going upstream and through your writing global and so many other activities focused attention on health and well being. We articulated a vision about four years ago that we describe as precision health. Now everyone's heard of precision medicine. Precision medicine is what you should get if you really get sick. If you have cancer, you want precision medicine. You wanna have, not the treatment off the shelf, you wanna have treatment that's tailored to the characteristics of The disease of your overall makeup. But can't we take those same enablers of precision medicine, of genomics and data science and other aspects, and apply those in a predictive and preventive way? And that really is the goal of precision health, to predict, prevent, and cure precisely. And the way we'll know that we're succeeding is that When precision health succeeds, the need for precision medicine, the need for ultra- specialized care for severe acute diseases, that need should be reduced. Because we will have been able to predict, and prevent disease. When we can't prevent it, to diagnose it much earlier, and therefore treat it much more effectively. That often times we can today. And we now see the connection between stress and burn out in mental health. And in fact, I'm delighted that Stanford has partnered with Thrive Global to bring these programs to companies. And address this issue of mental health beyond the stigmatization which is very important but not enough. Because a lot of employees have a very hard time coming forward and acknowledging that they are depressed or anxious. So what is the most important research on which this Programs can be founded. I think one of the key messages about mental health as you just mentioned is that our knowledge of the science behind mental illness is still in its infancy. But The pace of the scientific advances are encouraging but also what's encouraging is that we're moving beyond treating a condition like depression. We're moving beyond thinking of depression as being one illness, which it isn't. We're moving beyond that and really looking at what are the subtypes of depression. Because just as we would never say, this person has cancer, they get this standard treatment for any cancer, I mean, no one would ever say that, and we wouldn't have even a decade or 20 years ago, but we've had primarily because of lack of scientific knowledge, and I think also because of the stigma you mentioned that Even today still persists around many aspects of mental illness. We've had this attitude that mental illnesses are all fundamentally the same or more similar than they are different. And as I think will here in a future panel, there are differences within a category of depression and and the symptoms that are manifested. By people who were depressed and really being able to look beyond or in addition to the symptoms at what the most effective treatments could be. And just as the most effective treatments for one form of depression in one individual maybe completely different for another individual with a different constellation of symptoms. And the science is really informing these types of approaches. But if equal importance just as we talk about predict, prevent, and cure before of equal importance as predicting and preventing mental illness to begin with. And that too is an area where I think we're making some progress through your work, through the attention of many people in this room. I think employers are now beginning to focus a lot more attention on the mental health and well being of their employees in addition to, providing of course insurance coverage for their physical well being. But looking at what in the work environment can be done to make Mental health and well being a feature of the workplace and something that's talked about, encouraged and promoted in the workplace as well. And you have been a pioneer in identifying and mental health problems and burn out problems among healthcare providers and Having an open conversation about that and also looking at the role of all the technological advances that we celebrate in accelerating those kind of mental health problems among doctors, and nurses, etc. One of my greatest concerns as a leader of an academic medical center, is that today in the United States. By various different metrics and standards, over half of the physicians practicing medicine in the United States are burned out. Based upon some very simple, and highly significant criteria. I mean that's just unacceptable. Physicians have among the highest if not the highest suicide rate in any profession in the country today. How did we get to where we are today and of even greater importance how are we going to get out of it moving forward. I think the first step is to recognize it is a problem and to study the problem and to discuss among ourselves as health care professionals, acknowledge that we have a problem and we've got to focus on the solution. I believe we were the first academic medical center, a couple of years ago, to establish the position of a chief wellness officer into recruit. A national leader in that area take [ UNKNOWN ] to be our chief wellness officer for academic center. And then, through surveys, through interactions with providers, with patients, with other Healthcare professionals, to really try to understand the drivers of burnout and we see that as with anything that's complicated, it's not one factor Yes, personal resilience has to do with it. So promoting wellness in the workspace, as we talked about with other industries, is important. But also, the culture of wellness within our organization is so critically important, and the practice environment. And that's where technology really comes into play, we I've heard previously today, we just had a round table at lunch on the electronic health record how we can improve that. Today it's just unacceptable that physicians are spending substantial parts of their time in many cases more of the majority of their time interacting with the electronic health record. Rather than directly interacting with patients. That's a big driver of burn out. I don't think any of us went into medicine because we wanted to be an expert at making the EHR work. I think we recognize we have to make it work but that's not the driving motivation. The more we can get these systems to function more effectively and enable physicians and patients to interact directly The better off we'll all be .>> So Lloyd, we only have a minute left. But you have a statistic in your forthcoming book that I was likely to have already read that I'd love for you to explain. You say that as a driver of health outcomes the quality of medical care is only 10 %. And yet that where so much of our system and our attention is focused. So, what are some of the other facts? The social behavioral environmental determinants of health, are by far and away, the most important determinants of health. [ UNKNOWN ] Who study, you read they together account for roughly 70 % of the determinants of health. Yes the medical care we receive and our genetics play a role but that's maybe 25 to 30 % and we need to focus a lot more attention on social environmental and behavioral determinants of health and those of us in academic health centers need to focus just as we're doing the pioneering discovery based research that's leading to advances in cancer therapy and. We're going to for sure continue to do that, we also need to focus attention academically, on how we can have impact on the social, environmental, and behavioral determinants of health, and in so doing, will be able to better fulfill our mission, which is ultimately to promote health and well being for all of us. Thank you so much Thank you very much Fascinating conversation. Thank you

Creating Preventative Mental Health Care

Health

A behind-the-curtain look at a brand new, cutting-edge program that’s taking mental well-being to the next level.