Collective attitudes around mental health have changed enormously in recent years. But the healthcare system has typically operated reactively, with a ‘crisis-only’ approach to mental healthcare.
However, a recent survey has revealed that more than a third of UK patients expect to be offered proactive mental health check-ins. This means routine, provider-initiated conversations to evaluate a person’s current emotional wellbeing and creating the opportunity to spot any concerns early. People increasingly expect this kind of support to be readily accessible through the benefits available to them, with nearly half (47%) of patients saying mental health provision would influence whether they join or stay with an organisation.
The survey results are something I observe clinically every day: our relationship with mental health is changing, driven in part by growing psychological literacy and rising expectations of proactive care among younger generations. With 54% of patients actively seeking preventative screenings, it’s clear they want support before their symptoms intensify. Patients are asking, in effect, to be met earlier, before the acute episode, before the hospitalisation, before the damage to relationships, careers and self.
As a psychiatrist, I find this enormously encouraging. And yet it exposes an uncomfortable tension with a system that has historically been structured to respond to breakdown rather than identify and intervene earlier. Preventative mental healthcare can and should be clinically robust. Clinical rigour should not be reserved for moments of crisis, but extended across prevention and early intervention.
This survey is telling us that the public has arrived at a view that medicine has not been designed to meet this consistently in practice. Prevention, personalisation and accessibility are widely accepted in principle, but not yet embedded as part of everyday care.
Gen Z influence on expectations – and the role of employers
The finding that over half (56%) of under-30s rank mental health support as their most valued workplace healthcare benefit – compared with just 37% of those aged 51 to 70 – reflects a cohort who have grown up with greater psychological literacy, who are less willing to endure suffering in silence and who have come to understand, rightly, that mental wellbeing is not a luxury but a necessity.
It also epitomises the growing crossover between care and the workplace, and how this is influencing demand for preventative care. The fact that nearly half of respondents said mental health provision would affect whether they join or stay with an organisation underscores something I have long felt: that the expectation of care has expanded beyond the clinic.
People no longer compartmentalise their mental health as separate from their working lives, their relationships and their sense of identity. They are asking for an integrated, continuous model of support, and employers are increasingly part of that ecosystem. They can help provide more readily-available support when traditional care pathways can seem harder for patients to access.
This demand for faster, more accessible support is reflected in the finding that two-thirds of 18 to 30-year-olds now plan to self-fund their care. For organisations competing for younger talent, health insurance and mental health provision can help create earlier pathways to support, with benefits for both employee wellbeing and workplace participation.
What does a preventative mental healthcare model look like?
The desire for a continuous and preventative model of support is precisely what drives my work, both in independent practice and at my mental healthcare clinic. In my clinical roles, I have seen first-hand what becomes possible when patients are met with rigour, continuity and genuine personalisation of care.
That experience has directly shaped the model at my own clinic, which was founded on the conviction that clinically robust care need not be synonymous with reactive care. Relationship, continuity and a genuine understanding of the individual are not peripheral to good psychiatry. They are its very core.
One of the underlying features of a personalised and preventative care model is how well healthcare systems, data and workflows are connected. Delivering care orchestration across the patient journey is what enables greater ownership and proactivity, ensuring every stage of care is joined up rather than operating in isolation. If someone receives a test result that requires a follow-up appointment with another clinician, for example, the systems in use should be able to automatically trigger this action without any unnecessary delays.
Any communication, patient information or clinical decisions should move as one across the patient journey and without any interruption. In this sense, it’s not about offering more digital tools, but rather improving how well these tools can share information between themselves and activate the next course of action.
Meeting the new standard
The next step is ensuring that preventative mental healthcare moves from aspiration into everyday practice. That means building models of care that prioritise early intervention, continuity and a deeper understanding of the individual.
Young people in particular are driving this new standard, but the expectation for preventative care is becoming increasingly apparent throughout different age groups. The question for clinicians, commissioners and employers alike is whether our systems are courageous enough to meet that expectation.
Dr Daniel Masud, Consultant General Adult & Addiction Psychiatrist and Co-founder of MIRACOURT, working with Semble