Experts Predict A "Tsunami Of Psychiatric Illness" In 2022, Inspiring Funding For Mental Health-Focused Biotech

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There’s no doubt that our society experienced immense emotional damage throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Our lives were drastically altered, and we had to learn how to roll with the punches and stay afloat—fast. 

It has never been more critical to support the field of mental health than right now. Before 2020, mental disorders were the leading causes of the global strain put on healthcare, with depressive and anxiety disorders being front and center of it all. According to the World Health Organization, one in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives. The emergence of Covid has only exacerbated the situation and ignited the race to find solutions for this rising problem.

Fortunately, biotech companies have sprung into action like never before, showing significant progress and piquing the interest of those who want to fund these efforts. Healthcare and biotech have always caught the eye of investors in the startup and technology worlds, even before a deadly virus pushed investment into the sector to even taller heights. Now, as we are still working to revert to pre-Covid times, investors realize just how much potential these innovative companies have.

But it’s not just COVID-19 driving industry interest, investors and startup tech companies say. A series of recent technological advances and consumer shifts from new lifestyle habits have helped continue to attract these high-tier investors despite recent industry shifts. Total funding in digital health in 2020 equated to $5.4 billion, exceeding the previous total in 2019, according to a RockHealth 2020 midyear report.

So, the question is no longer whether technology will transform mental health care but when and how it will occur.

Meeting People Where They Are

The mental health fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic will likely linger even as the acute threat of the virus fades. More than half of the people who need mental health care do not get treatment—most seek emotional support from social media, diagnoses from trendy lifestyle quizzes and polls, and some receive medications from primary care. However, many are unwilling to seek medication or therapy even when these treatments are appropriate and available. Luckily, we are in an age where we can experience digital interventions.

Digital interventions consist of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), where patients are trained to recognize and modify their thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors that resemble mental illnesses, resulting in positive changes in emotions. However, what excites investors and psychiatrists even more than the science is how this technology is advancing and spreading. Smartphone ownership in mentally ill populations meets the national average, and most digital interventions now exist as smartphone apps. Engaging people directly to improve their mental health is feasible since there are no surgical procedures or invasive diagnostics that require in-person visits.

This has sparked innovation from large and small companies working to provide treatments for disorders such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Behavidence, a startup company that uses artificial intelligence to monitor psychiatric and neurological disorders, aims to lead the charge to ease the swell of untreated psychiatric illnesses.

Behavidence is adding to the field by using digital phenotyping to accurately track depression, anxiety, and ADHD symptoms with the help of non-intrusive, non-privacy-related smartphone sensors. This company doesn’t use sensors such as GPS, call log texts, message logs, etc., to track the user’s behavior, though. Instead, they have created a daily mental health profiling metric to show a daily score based on the user’s digital behavior. This helps the user make informed decisions about their health and interventions.

The majority of innovations have focused on increasing access to care, but this, by itself, probably won’t improve mental health. The meaningful change also depends on innovations that increase engagement, facilitate integration with primary care, and focus on quality.

Access to mental health treatment is getting easier, and we have the global pandemic and innovative biotech companies ready to answer the call to thank for that. While the pandemic has taught us that healthcare can be transformed rapidly and successfully, behavioral health needs will likely require even more profound changes. The technology revolution can meet this emerging public health need as long as we focus innovation on the problems within the massive mental health market.

Image sourced from Pexels

This post contains sponsored advertising content. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.