Mental health issues are one of the most common causes of disability, affecting more than a billion people worldwide. Addressing mental health difficulties can present extraordinarily tough problems: what can providers do to help people in the most precarious situations? How do changes in the physical brain affect our thoughts and experiences? And at the end of the day, how can everyone get the care they need?
Answering those questions was the shared goal of the researchers who attended the Mental Health, Brain, and Behavioral Science Research Day in September. While the problems they faced were serious, the new solutions they started to build could ultimately help improve mental health care at individual and societal levels.
“We’re building something that there’s no blueprint for,” said Mark Rapaport, MD, CEO of Huntsman Mental Health Institute at the University of Utah. “We’re developing new and durable ways of addressing some of the most difficult issues we face in society.”
The diverse approaches required to improve mental health care were reflected in the day’s themes.
AI and mental health
Artificial intelligence (AI)-based analysis could dramatically change mental health care by detecting patterns in vast amounts of information, flagging people who are at higher risk of mental health struggles to enable better preventive care.
- Nina de Lacy, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry in the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine (SFESOM), is using AI to figure out which social factors can predict mental health issues in advance.
- Christopher Gregg, PhD, professor of neurobiology in SFESOM, is zooming in on patient video data to analyze facial expressions and gestures, ideally providing diagnoses and predicting risk on a broad scale.
- Guest speaker Eric Achtyes, MD, professor and chair of psychiatry at Western Michigan University, offered a note of caution, arguing that while technology has great potential to bring people better mental health care, AI tools can fail in unpredictable ways and must be accompanied by expert human involvement.
The brain at work
Other researchers got under the hood of mental health by studying how our brains function—and malfunction.
- Randall Peterson, PhD, dean of the College of Pharmacy (COP), explained how his lab is working to find better medicines for mental health issues such as opioid addiction by using high-throughput tests with zebrafish to analyze hundreds of compounds a day.
- Bia DePaula-Silva, PhD, assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology in COP, is learning how viral infections of the brain can lead to epilepsy, a common and incurable neurological disorder.
- Emily Dennis, PhD, assistant professor of neurology in SFESOM, studies how traumatic brain injury causes the long-term changes to brain anatomy.
- Cory Inman, PhD, assistant professor of psychology in the College of Social and Behavioral Science, is using an advanced mobile brain imaging rig to watch how memories are made in the real world.
Ethics and society
Mental health research is inextricably intertwined with societal and ethical issues, which were a focus for many speakers.
- Lynn Maxfield, PhD, associate professor of vocology in the School of Music, and Rebecca Zarate, PhD, associate dean for research in the College of Fine Arts, are studying how participation in performing arts affects mental health, with a particular focus on how group performance or the presence of a wider audience might change things.
- Zoe Robbins, DNP, assistant clinical professor in the College of Nursing, presented a model for connecting rural patients to mental health services through telehealth and a faculty practice model.
- Brent Kious, MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry, spoke on ethical issues related to psychiatry in very severe cases.
- James Tabery, PhD, professor of philosophy in the College of Humanities, traced Utah’s history of sterilizing people with mental disabilities without their consent, from explicitly eugenic practices in the 1920s up to current state law that continues to legalize forcible sterilization.
The broad spectrum of talks reinforced the belief that mental health is an extraordinarily serious and complex issue, one that will require the dedication of researchers across the span of the health sciences and beyond.
Accordingly, collaboration and community were major focuses of the day’s event. Dozens of posters from both Utah researchers and visiting scholars were up throughout the event, drawing faculty, students, clinical coordinators, and more to discuss during multiple breaks throughout the day. Roundtable sessions with speakers brought more opportunities for discussion, networking, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
While the issues on the table were serious, the atmosphere was one of hope as the sparks of new solutions kindled. “Together, we can change the dialogue,” Rapaport said in closing remarks. “Together, we can make it better for people, and that’s what it’s all about.”
