Future mental health and a changing workforce - Nature

As mental health needs outpace the supply of psychiatrists, the future of care will depend on expanding and reimagining the workforce beyond traditional physician-centered models. From telehealth and psychiatric pharmacists to interventional psychiatry and community-based interventions, emerging approaches point toward more collaborative, accessible and equitable systems of mental healthcare.

In his 2015 book The Patient Will See You Now, cardiologist and digital health proponent Eric Topol presented the case for the shaping of a new paradigm in medicine. Much as Gutenberg’s printing press galvanized literacy and reshaped the cultural transference of knowledge in the Renaissance, Topol argued that smartphones and connected technologies could be similarly revolutionary, giving individuals greater agency over their own health data and moving toward ‘doctorless’ patient autonomy. Topol emphasized that this democratization would not be a world without doctors but instead would be marked by reduced reliance on traditional physician-centered models of healthcare.