Shifting the Emphasis to Trauma in Mental Health Treatment: a chat w Mat Costanzo

human insights with james cox

Mat Costanzo is a trained therapist and researcher. He recently wrote a paper on shifting the focus of how we deal with issues like PTSD, depression and anxiety from a medication focused approach, to one based on identifying the original trauma in order to create real healing. He writes, "clinics continue to view mental illnesses as biomedical conditions that can be best addressed with pharmacological treatments." He continues, "this is naive in light of the complexity of the conditions to be treated...". He proposes, "a shift toward an emphasis on contextual factors, that a trauma-based diagnostic and treatment model, would improve diagnostic accuracy and outcomes."

PTSD, depression and anxiety are issues that affect millions of Americans. This would represent a massive change in policy and I believe improve outcomes dramaticly.