Forbes: Five Tech Innovations That Changed Mental Health In 2020

In January 2020, mental health care already faced multiple crises. Digitally native kids lived more and more of their lives on their phones, giving rise to concerns about the toll social media and screens were taking on young people’s mental health. Meanwhile, the opioid crisis continued to surge. Millions of Americans have leaned on these pills to manage pain and anxiety, but it proved incredibly difficult to stop taking them. Cutting patients off from prescription opioids only fed a rise in illegal fentanyl use with more deaths. Overuse of, and dependence on, benzodiazepines was another silent epidemic in the making.

Then Covid-19 hit in March, intensifying these crises while creating urgent new mental health care needs as people struggled with pandemic-related stress, anxiety and grief.

Fortunately, even as all these crises rolled across the country, 2020 saw many innovations that harnessed AI and big data, smartphones and even our current habits to meet a raft of mental health challenges not seen in several generations. Here are five tech innovations that changed mental health care in 2020:

Continue reading this article by Lucid Lane President and CEO Adnan Asar in Forbes.