Salus Forum: May 2025

Through the use of social media, as Bill G brought up, people are using objectivist constructs that sound like they’re scientific. So, there is power to the scientific construct. However, the scientists seem the most baffled regarding how to use our scientific construct in a way that actually influences public behavior. What are the ways that other people seem to have figured out, like marketers, how to influence people—and why can’t we use these methods?

Bill B

Both Gay and Joe had the advantage of working with tools that seem scientific—that seem real. I know that Gay couples her neurofeedback work with psychotherapy. She gets to know the person before using a technology with them afterwards. So, in some sense, the issue is” How do you become both scientific and non-scientific? How do you blend the data, the appropriate objectivist data, with a narrative?

Jeremy

And part of that, Bill B, is the nature of the narrative, as I understand it. For example, let’s take Joe’s description of childhood and adolescent depression. The average time for a kid to seek some help is 10 years. That means the public narrative regarding avoidance of that realm is so powerful that children who are suffering feel they can’t even talk to a high school counselor. And yet, we have all these amazing tools that aren’t being accessed.

What is it in our cultural narrative that makes people see the utilization of anything related to behavioral health? As you know, mental illness is stigmatized. I guess we could say that the stigma narrative is powerful. So, what do you do when a powerful stigma is obstructing the utilization?

We have a stigma issue in primary care as well. People think, well, I should go see somebody who only takes care of left eyeballs or right earlobes. Why would I see a general physician who could actually talk to me about everything? And so, they go and see 12 different people, and then they’re frustrated. They end up seeing a naturopath because they can’t figure out how to even navigate the health system.

So, the ways in which cultural narratives impact healthcare access aren’t really get looked at in any kind of functional way, other than trying to say up the code billing for a certain service that no one accesses. That happens all the time in the program. Or, let’s create a new code for this special treatment, and then no one actually ever bills for it.

Bill B

Jeremy, you’re talking about narratives that are powerful. So, what are the implications for treatment of childhood depression? How do we get children and their parents to report depression. Perhaps we need a new superhero called Sadman. We need a superhero who’s depressed, all in black, a black cape. Somehow in their depression, they’re still able to save the world.