Thomas Insel shares how ieso is making psychotherapy better in psychotherapy.net interview
In conversation with Dr Lawrence Rubin for psychotherapy.net, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health and author of the recently published Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health, explains why he is intrigued by how ieso uses natural language processing (NLP) to help therapists improve their online sessions.
The interview focuses on nonmedical aspects of mental health care, and provides a glimpse into some of the key issues that impact the assessment and treatment of mental health conditions. Insel, however, understands neuroscience must now yield insights into social and psychological interventions.
Supporting science at ieso
The interview touches on the disparity between what we know and what we do, and comments that the effectiveness of psychotherapy depends more on the therapist and skill-based therapy.
The evidence ieso generates from clinical trials is used to better psychotherapists’ training by providing feedback from real-world data. “But what’s amazing about it is that by getting this kind of real-time feedback, therapists have gotten better and better. And when you look at outcomes, they went from 49% recovery to 67% recovery…” says Insel, “It was actually more useful for the therapist than the client. But ultimately, the clients enjoyed that impact”.
This is further supported by research published by ieso’s Clinical Science Laboratory. The most recent paper in Psychotherapy Research aims to understand the relationship between patient responses and clinical outcomes in text-based internet-enabled Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
Future-proofing psychotherapy
Insel explains that ieso’s use of natural language processing (NLP) is revolutionising how language is used in therapy sessions by measuring factors like trust and providing objective evidence of therapeutic alliance. He imagines there are further opportunities for technology to improve the quality of therapy too.
Democratising healthcare
The interview concludes that we are beginning to see a transformation in this field of mental health care delivery as interaction shifts to being more patient-centric, and technology can help democratise mental health care.
Read the full interview onpsychotherapy.net here
To find out more about Thomas Insel, visit https://www.thomasinselmd.com/
