Medssenger Team
In a world of high velocity change and increasing demands on individuals, understanding how to maintain good behavioral health is more important than ever. A recent article reported record numbers of U.S. college students seeking treatment for depression and anxiety. A 2017 American College Health Association survey of more than 63,000 college students at 92 schools reported that nearly 40% of college students said they had felt so depressed in the prior year that it was difficult for them to function. In the same survey, 61% of students said they had “felt overwhelming anxiety” in the same time period.
Effective management of behavioral health conditions such as depression and anxiety often requires good care coordination because individuals often have other conditions and care providers. In the absence of care coordination, providers may not have visibility to therapies, testing and findings of other clinicians that are relevant to their decision making and care planning. Most colleges, however, do not have the resources and tools for this sophisticated level of care coordination.
Online counseling has the potential to be especially effective in preventing anxiety and depression and managing mild levels of stress among college students, who are all members of the digital generation. While adopting telehealth technology in treating depression and anxiety is certainly a step in the right direction, current systems do not have the capacity to integrate the care process. Disconnected care delivery requires numerous patient interactions with different providers, organizations, and government agencies. It also causes multiple provider “handoffs” of patients for different services and the need for transmitting and sharing information to all parties involved. Care management for depression includes coordinating care with primary care and specialty clinicians; encouraging treatment adherence; and maintaining close communication. If coordination is successful, clinical outcomes are better.
Medssenger’s platform provides an effective and intuitive solution for the care coordination and management gaps in managing patients with depression and other behavioral health disorders requiring multiple care providers. It has been used, for example, to manage the needs of patients with substance abuse disorders (learn more at our webinar). Our app has the capacity to integrate and coordinate efforts from multiple providers in both mental health and general health fields, strengthen patient-provider relationships, and maintain close communication between all parties. Patients with depression and anxiety often feel alone and isolated from the outside world. Medssenger provides these patients a way to stay closely connected to their therapists and gives them an open line of communication at all times. Furthermore, we could help organizations implement depression and anxiety care management plans that keep the patients and all relevant providers on the same page to ensure compliance and reduce errors, thereby improving the final outcomes.