Dr. Thomas Insel visited Pepperdine on Oct. 30 to speak about the current mental health crisis. He also gave the audience potential solutions to help solve the crisis.
Pepperdine hosted Dr. Thomas Insel for the David Baird Lecture Series on Oct. 30 in Elkins Auditorium. Dr. Insel spoke to the Pepperdine community about the current mental health crisis, why there is a crisis and what solutions are available in order to fix the crisis.
“I deeply believe that serious mental health and substance issues are medical problems,” Insel said. “However, the solutions have to be more than medical and need to be defined as social, environmental and political.”
Insel is both a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who’s been a leader in mental health research, according to his website. Insel previously served as Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and is currently Executive Chair for Vanna Health which focuses on people with serious mental illnesses, according to his website.
Lee Kats, interim dean of Seaver College and Connie Horton, vice president for Student Affairs, welcomed Insel with a few words.
“Insel has a great presentation summarizing so much accessible research with practical ways to address it,” Horton said.
Insel began his speech by stating what the mental health crisis consists of. He brought up how he believes the current mental health crisis is not just one crisis.
“I’m going to argue that there are actually three crises,” Insel said. “There’s a youth mental health crisis, a substance use disorder (SUD) crisis and a serious mental illness (SMI) crisis.”
There is evidence to show a youth mental health crisis because the number of people who need care has gone up, Insel said. Suicide has also gone up during the previous two decades for people who are under 24 years of age due to the fact that there are more people feeling sad and hopeless.
“The number of deaths of despair, which is the likelihood someone will die from substance abuse or suicide, is greater than 180,000 for the years of 2020-2023,” Insel said.
Many of the deaths associated with the SUD crisis are due to fentanyl, Insel said.
“A lot of these deaths are driven by fentanyl which is so much more lethal than any other drug people have been addicted to,” Insel said. “The first time you play with fentanyl you have a pretty high likelihood of dying or overdosing.”
Insel used statistics to compare the number of people who died during the Vietnam War with the number of total drug overdose deaths in one year.
“The number of total deaths from the Vietnam War was 68,000,” Insel said. “Total overdose deaths in one year are 108,000.”
The SMI crisis is due to the fact that treatment options for people with serious mental illnesses has declined, Insel said.
“People with these disorders die 20-25 years before the rest of the population,” Insel said. “They are incarcerated at high rates and make up a large proportion of our homeless population.”
The reason for this happening is because it’s a crisis of care, Insel said.
“This is where the problems have been with us for a long time but in the 70s and 80s we did not see it because we had the resources to deal with it,” Insel said.
A lack of capacity, lack of engagement, lack of quality, lack of accountability and lack of equity are the main reasons for the current care crisis, Insel said.
“The largest mental institution in the United States is the L.A. County jail,” Insel said. “We have criminalized having an illness which is really bizarre.”
There are some surprising aspects when it comes to options for receiving care, Insel said.
“Some of the most effective providers are the least expensive such as peers and coaches,” Insel said. “Some of the most effective interventions are non-medical such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).”
There is also the ability to be able to do a lot with a remote visit, Insel said. There’s the ability to be able to collect speech and voice data and look at a person’s facial emotions.
“Technology can help us to bring primary and mental health care together,” Insel said. “We can fill in the gap so people can get help at the moment of need and not have to wait months for an appointment.”
Insel ended his presentation by speaking about how mental health issues should be redefined.
The mental health issues that exist can be defined as medical problems, Insel said.
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Contact Alicia Dofelmier via email: alicia.dofelmier@pepperdine.edu
