It may come as a surprise, but when it comes to evolving mental healthcare, clinicians and researchers may benefit by taking a thoughtful look at software development. Here's why. The human brain has often been coined the most complex organ in the universe. Wouldn’t it make sense then to believe the mind lives within a similar ballpark of complexity? Psychiatry or mental healthcare exists largely to treat problems of the mind. How then do we address questions regarding ed

The Texas legislature votes that existing state laws don’t go far enough to protect patients’ access to mental health care. It’s no accident that the Texas capitol building stands about fifteen feet taller than its domed federal counterpart in Washington, DC. In both their buildings and their attitudes, Texans like to stand a little taller, symbolizing their characteristic independence. Texas' rugged individualism has even, at times, led state lawmakers to threaten secession

Our PHQ-9 data collection and analysis project revealed that over time, our clients’ depression symptoms improved. The question is, why? As we revealed in our second blog entry, our independent research confirms that when it comes to treating depression, we’re doing something right. We can’t pinpoint precisely what that something is, but we do know that what we offer is very different from how psychiatry is often practiced today. In the past 20 years, insurance reimbursement

We gathered and tracked PHQ-9 test results from forty of our clients. Did we improve their mood—or did we just collect a lot of paper? In our first blog entry on this topic, we talked about why we believe tracking treatment outcomes in numbers with reliable tools, such as the PHQ-9, is key to providing a client with the best chance at achieving his or her treatment goals. Now you may be thinking, do these people really think that they can derive meaningful information on som

Definition Actuary : 1. Insurance. a person who computes premium rates, dividends, and assesses risk via probabilities based on statistical records. 2.(formerly) a registrar or clerk. Monetary risk is something we all contend with when we take out our healthcare wallet —especially when it comes to investing in mental health. Whether you’re an individual consumer or a corporation contracting for benefits, it can be hard to measure the value of a medical endeavor. How can we m

In medicine, adding the words “evidence” and “valid” to an instrument, treatment, or concept lends them a sense of gravity and certainty—almost as if the words themselves are some kind of effectiveness insurance policy. An Evidence Based Treatment is a method of care developed by experimental design and in-depth analysis of statistical data. The goal: to derive the most reliable, vetted practice guidelines for a particular diagnosis. Typical names for it are Evidence-Based Me