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Forbes
22-07-2025
- Health
- Forbes
Is The Mental Health System Broken Or Was It Never Built To Work?
Five years ago, a research team at Stanford achieved what many in psychiatry had long hoped for: A treatment for severe depression that worked rapidly, reliably, and without medication. In their 2020 SAINT trial, 19 out of 21 participants with treatment-resistant depression achieved remission after just five days of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). It was a landmark moment. Yet today, the treatment remains almost entirely inaccessible to the average patient. Stanford Accelerated Intelligent Neuromodulation Therapy (SAINT) is still paid for out of pocket, costing roughly $20,000, and insurers have been slow to move. A paradox at the heart of American mental healthcare: as innovation accelerates, access stalls. Over the last five years, more than $13 billion has been invested in the sector, but outcomes haven't improved in kind. Patients still cycle through multiple failed treatments. Clinicians are burnt out, and payers are stuck making decisions with no data. It's tempting to say the system is broken. But perhaps it was never built to do what we're now asking of it. A System Built for Simplicity, Not Reality Modern mental healthcare still relies on a medical model designed for acute illness: assess symptoms, assign a diagnosis, and prescribe a standard treatment. It's a linear approach that works well for infections and injuries. But mental illness is not linear. A messy intersection of biology, trauma, environment, and social context shapes conditions like depression, PTSD, and OCD. There's no single cause, no universal treatment. And yet, the system continues to reduce people to diagnosis codes and protocol templates, often leaving naivety at the door. This reductionist model doesn't reflect the complexity of the human experience, and it leaves patients, clinicians, and payers with more questions than answers. The system doesn't work for anyone. Yet, the misalignment of incentives means that all stakeholders are working against one another. Payers prioritize risk management—and in the absence of meaningful data, default to spending as little as possible. Providers focus on individual outcomes. Pharma chases scalable efficacy. Patients just want relief. But it seems no one is working with the correct information, and the frustration and disappointment are palpable. Data alone doesn't matter, because it's about how you use the data to drive change, according to Brayden Efseroff, psychiatrist and Chief Medical Officer at Allia Health. 'When patients cycle through multiple failed treatments before finding relief, it's not just frustrating - it's a sign of systemic dysfunction. Decisions are being made without context.' Ariel Ganz, PhD, a precision mental health researcher at Stanford, agrees, 'The same data clinicians need to design effective treatment plans is also critical for payers to manage risk, researchers to improve understanding, and patients to advocate for themselves on their health journey. 'Without more high-quality data, none of these parties can effectively improve patient outcomes.' Precision Mental Health Company is addressing this issue at its core. Their AI-native electronic health record (EHR) isn't designed to replace therapists or psychiatrists, but to support them by capturing, organizing, and translating real-world data into usable, structured insights. This innovative solution holds the promise of a brighter future for mental healthcare. Instead of extracting revenue from clinicians through software subscriptions or taking a percentage of their reimbursement, payers partner directly with Allia on value-based contracts. They're paid only when patients achieve measurable improvements, a stark contrast to the fee-for-service model that rewards volume over outcomes. Amie Leighton, CEO of Allia Health, discovered the need for better data firsthand during years of cycling through hospitals and treatment before finally receiving adequate care. The turning point came when her clinicians had access to complete information about her and were able to communicate with each other - something that had been missing throughout her previous treatments. This personal experience, and the empathy it engenders, shaped the company's mission: to build the infrastructure that allows for context-rich, coordinated, and personalised care. The Bigger Picture How do you fix a system that was never designed to work in the first place? We still have a long way to go, but for the millions of Americans struggling with mental health challenges, finally, an infrastructure-first approach offers something that's been missing: a system designed to actually help people recover. In an industry where patients commonly endure multiple failed treatments before finding relief, this represents a significant shift toward care that prioritizes outcomes.
Forbes
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
The Rise Of Black AI Influencers: A New Frontier In Exploiting Black Women's Talent
Online users have noticed an unusual amount of AI-generated Black women personas have infiltrated ... More different social media sites. A series of Black women AI 'influencers' have popped up on social media and have rightfully caused a stir. Currently, if you do quick search for 'AI influencer' on TikTok or Instagram, the top search results that pop up are videos of AI-generated Black women, acting as caricatures, in exaggerated and stereotypical ways. It's only a matter of time before these Black women AI influencers are used by companies and brands to drive the newest trends. This article explores the newest iteration of Black women's talent, culture, and influence being extracted for gain and what can be done to combat the latest version of digital Blackface. Black women face a concrete ceiling that makes career advancement more challenging. According to April 2025 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Black women had the most significant job losses of any demographic. Research reveals that Black women face widening and persistent disparities in the influencer industry. In one 2023 study, two Stanford researchers found evidence that influencers of color earn less than white influencers and that influencers of color are less likely to receive monetary compensation from brands compared to their white counterparts. A 2024 report from SevenSix Agency replicated these same findings—their research revealed that Black influencers earn 34.04% less than white influencers. According to April 2025 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Black women had the most ... More significant job losses of any demographic. Online users have noticed an unusual amount of AI-generated Black women personas have infiltrated different social media sites. With the newest crop of AI tools, the ability to create realistic, high-quality videos from text prompts is available at our fingertips. If you look closely enough, you will notice weird lighting, distortions, unnatural movements, and out of sync audio in many of these videos—but to the untrained eye, it's difficult to recognize these videos as AI-generated. Many of these videos follow a disturbing but familiar pattern—the extraction and erasure of Black women's genius, creativity, and contributions. It's only a matter of time before corporations jump on the bandwagon and utilize similar AI-generated caricatures to push brands and sell products. Aside from the obvious ethical issue of these AI-generated personas perpetuating harmful anti-black stereotypes, there is also the attempted extraction of Black women's essence for capitalistic gain. It's important to consider this: where did the AI copy the Black woman aesthetic from? Whose images, likeness, aura, and vibes were used to train the AI? Black women influencers, without their consent or compensation, are the prototype. It's only a matter of time before corporations jump on the bandwagon and utilize similar ... More AI-generated caricatures to push brands and sell products. As research indicates, there is a persistent pay gap between Black influencers and white influencers. Black women will now also have to compete with AI-generated influencers. This new crop of Black women AI-generated influencers will further exacerbate these pay disparities through the potential loss of income and decreased visibility that Black women influencers will experience when companies opt to use AI-generated influencers instead of real ones. There are steps that Black women creators can take as AI-generated personas continue to rise. Explore what legal options are available to protect and secure your image and likeness. Don't be afraid to call out instances of AI co-optation. Join collectives for influencers in your domain for support around negotiation, industry trends and ways to advocate for greater equity in the space. Educate your audience on the growing trend of AI influencers, how it harms real creators, and share ways your community can support you in real time. It's important for more safeguards to be put in place to curtail unethical AI usage. More legislation is desperately needed, but the laws never seem to catch up with the pace of the technological advances. In an ideal scenario, public callouts would lead companies to adopt more ethical AI practices. But in a world where profits always seem to matter more than people, we cannot rely on or wait for corporations to do the right thing. The power is in the hands of the people, and our voices are formidable tools to drive change.
