Why we should be hopeful about the future of mental health

I've failed to write this essay five times. You see, I wanted to convince you that mental health is important. I wanted to make the case for you to care about it, maybe even work on it.

But I kept hitting the same problem.

I’d write out a draft. I would list all the stats about how many people experience mental illness. Then I would tell you the personal stories of people who have suffered. But when I reread these drafts, they would feel so heavy. They’d feel negative. Even depressing. They were really turning me off.

"Ugh, yeah I get it, another massive global issue that is getting worse… and our governments are ignoring it… yadda yadda....".

No-one likes to hear about problems.

So this time, I'm going to focus on the hope. I'm going to look forwards, not backwards. I'm going to tell you why we should be excited and hopeful about the future of mental health.

The first reason, is that we currently understand so little about mental health. We aren't actually sure what causes mental illness. The leading theories tell us that that there are risk factors and protective factors. Risk factors make us more likely to have a mental illness - e.g., experiencing trauma as a child. Protective factors make us less likely to experience mental illness - e.g., having a supporting family. But no one factor is strongly predictive.

We don't no why some people develop mental illness and others don't.

We also don't understand the brain that well and how it works. Leading neuroscientists will be the first to tell you this.

Without that understanding, we are limited in what we can do to both prevent and treat mental illness.

OK, how is this a good thing?

Well, it means the future is all upside. Imagine I told you that we understand mental illness perfectly. We know exactly what causes it and how to treat it. But, we still have massive mental health problems in our society. Then that would be a bad situation.

The fact that we don't understand these things now, is exactly why we should be hopeful. When we look forward, I'm confident that we will understand them. The advances in our understanding of human health over the last 100 years is phenomenal. If we apply this same rate of progress to mental health, we will know so much more in ten years than we do today. And with that new understanding, we can do so much more to prevent and treat mental illness.

The second reason to be hopeful about the future of mental health is technology. Like it or not, technology has massively improved our standard of living over the last 250 years. It has helped solve challenges like transport, communication, energy, construction and health.

Let me tell you a story. In 1910, if you had kidney stones, your only option was to undergo a procedure called a lithotomy. A doctor would place a massive incision in your abdomen and then physically extract the kidney stones. Don't think you're getting the benefits of modern anaesthesia during this operation by the way. That wasn't around yet. Sterilisation wasn't really a thing either so the chances you would get an infection were high. Antibiotics? Nope. The infection would likely make you very sick and could even kill you. If you were lucky enough to survive, your recovery would be long and painful.

Today, if you have kidney stones there is a nifty treatment called ESWL (extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy). With ESWL, the doctor focuses shock waves on your kidney stones. This breaks them down into small pieces and you can just pee them out. After a few treatments, your kidney stones are gone and you can go right back to your normal life.

In mental health, we have only scratched the surface in the application of technology. Sure, there are some interesting apps and drugs being used, but in general, we are extremely early on the curve of technology adoption.

In the coming decades, technology will get more advanced and we will apply more of it to mental health. We will develop mental health equivalents of ESWL and look back on our old way of doing things as crude and ineffective. Again, it is all upside!

Stigma and awareness are still big issues in mental health. They stop people from understanding their own mental health and seeking help when they need it. But the good news is that they are trending in the right direction and this is the third reason we should be hopeful. Younger generations are more open to talking about mental health and more likely to seek help. This is a really good thing.

They are also more likely to work on and advocate for social causes they care about, mental health being one of them. This puts more pressure on governments to focus on mental health and means many of our best and brightest will actually be working in mental health. This can only help to improve outcomes.

Mental health is still a big problem for us. The stats are not good and we have a long road ahead of us.

But imagine you lived in 1910 and I came back from the future to tell you how how much better healthcare could be. I’d tell you that;

• Life expectancy would increase from 34 to 73.
• Infant mortality would decrease from 17% to 3%.
• Infectious disesases like smallpox and polio would be eradicated.

If you even believed me, you would surely feel extremely positive about this future. This is where we stand today with mental health.

These reasons to be hopeful are not forgone conclusions. They will not just happen on their own. But with a large number of courageous, creative people working hard on this problem, we will see things improve.

We will know more, invent more and live in a society that cares more.

And with that, we should be excited and hopeful about what the future holds for mental health.