2025: Trends, Predictions, and Vision For Mental Health

1. Online and distance counseling will continue to grow in popularity.

 

2. Computer addictions of all types, including those related to pornography, social media, shopping, games, and gambling, will become more problematic.

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3. Health insurance companies will continue to limit mental health services as long as regulations allow them to.

 

4. Financial and other challenges will continue to create a tremendous need for psychotherapy. Some of this need will be met by self-help groups.

 

5. The public is more aware of and open to the need for good mental health. This trend will continue as the media continues to normalize the use of mental health services. We will continue to see “real” people discussing their problems on TV as well as glimpses of relationships between fictional characters and their therapists.

 

6. Like professionals in other fields, mental health practitioners who have developed niche markets, strong client and referral bases, and strong credentials will be most successful.

 

7. Mental health practitioners (Psychologists, Clinical Social Workers, Mental Health Counselors, and Marriage and Family Therapists) will continue to compete with Psychics (who offer a quick fix) and Life Coaches. Sadly, disasters will result when clues that a client needs a more intensive mental health intervention are missed.

 

8. Mental health practitioners (Psychologists, Clinical Social Workers, Mental Health Counselors, and Marriage and Family Therapists) will only be able to stand up to insurance companies when they put their professional and theoretical differences aside and unite their lobbies.

 

9. Technological advances will continue to provide medical interventions that seem to go against nature. Mental health practitioners are positioned to assist families and medical ethicists in the decision-making process and the debate regarding who lives, dies, and receives services.

 

10. Mental health practitioners will continue to provide the guidance and advice that was previously offered by extended family members and/or spiritual leaders.

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11. Psychopharmacological treatments, without the benefit of talk therapy, will continue to produce both addiction and drug related deaths, for those with celebrity (Heath Ledger, Brittany Murphy, Michael Jackson) and those without.

 

12. Wise medical doctors will incorporate mental health practitioners into their practices.

 

13. Media circus divorces will continue to decline in popularity with celebrity couples choosing instead to use the confidential process of mediation to negotiate their break-ups. The public will continue to follow suit.