Keep going, the idea said. Keep going.
Celebrating our progress in mental health innovation
(Note: This is post #1 of a two part series. One week poetry, the next week prose. By which I mean, today’s post is a truly a poetry-inspired reflection celebrating our progress in mental health. And the next aims to be more staid, with an eye toward the challenges that remain, with my BS meter on high, and with partially-jaded eye towards what we need to do to advance the needle in mental health. Stay tuned…)
“They followed the idea so far inside that outside was another idea.”
This final line of Paul Tran’s “The Cave” perfectly encapsulates how behavioral health innovation feels these days. Oh how I love this concept. That we make our way into the cave, unknowing of what we’ll find, following an idea, maybe just a kernel of a thought, and as we progress, deeper and deeper, the idea becomes so compelling that we follow, that we must follow, and do so until the idea no longer feels foreign, and that the outside, once the norm, now feels a strange and separate idea altogether.
Poetry and a mental health technology conference might seem odd bedfellows, but as I returned from Going Digital Health’s Behavioral Health Tech conference (#BHT2023) in Phoenix last week, these words seemed to strike the perfect note. The conference itself was incredible, an inspiring gathering of behavioral health innovators, from payers to providers to entrepreneurs to investors to policy makers and every combination therein. Flying to Phoenix in the crisp pre-dawn hours last Wednesday morning, I found myself pensive, reflecting on how much we have accomplished.
My mind floated back to 2016, the year AbleTo held our own inaugural Behavioral Health Innovation Summit (which we hosted for 3 years until it became a casualty of the pandemic). That first year, we crammed 125 behavioral health leaders (miniscule compared to last week’s 1000+ attendees) into borrowed, wood-paneled space at the Harvard Club in NYC. What a thrill back then to finally be talking about behavioral health and innovation in the same breath! But truly my mind went back to 2013, when I first joined AbleTo, then only 10 people strong. Our idea was premature, the idea that we could indeed deploy technology and data in service of delivering of high quality, outcomes driven, virtual mental health care. But it was a great idea.
Paul Tran’s poem The Cave begins:
Someone standing at the mouth had
the idea to enter. To go further
than light or language could
go. As they followed
the idea, light and language followed
like two wolves—panting, hearing themselves
panting. A shapeless scent
in the damp air ...
So we entered. We were ahead of our time, and the space was dark. But we shined light with our evangelism and tenacity, and we brought language with our loud voices and with words like “virtual” and “technology” and “outcomes” and “measurement” and “evidence” and “quality” and “proof” and “value.”
The poem continues:
Keep going, the idea said.
Someone kept going. Deeper and deeper, they saw
others had been there. Others had left
objects that couldn’t have found their way
there alone. Ocher-stained shells. Bird bones. Grounded
hematite. On the walls,
as if stepping into history, someone saw
their purpose...Keep going, we did. And it turned out, not surprisingly, that others had already entered and left their mark, mental health advocates, clinicians, patients, other believers. These earlier innovators were even further ahead of their time, and without their creativity and imagination, we would not be where we are today in our shared purpose. We kept going, biding our time until the world caught up, the space caught up, funding caught up, and slowly but surely, others, many others, eventually entered the cave alongside us.
Here we are today, a decade on, a crisis of mental health and a pandemic later, swimming in ideas! And last week, at #BHT2023, more than 1000 leaders and innovators in mental health, came together, assembled by the admirable Solome Tibebu, to opine on the state of the state in mental health and collectively contemplate how to drive forward much-needed innovation in behavioral health.
The idea. That we can. We can make a difference. We can deploy evidence-based care solutions to help people in need. We can use technology to simplify access and delivery. We can wisely use data and AI to guide care and measure outcomes. We can shine light where before there was only darkness. That’s the idea.
The poems closes with:
[...] Keep going,
the idea said again. Go ...
Someone continued. They followed the idea so far inside that
outside was another idea.The idea, at first just inanimate, now anthropomorphized, active, alive, leading us, shepherding us forward. So far inside that the outside, the old world, the past, the world of 2016 or 2013 or even earlier, is another idea altogether.
Yes, the system is riddled with challenges and so much work remains to be done (stay tuned for part two of this series…). But for now, let’s simply acknowledge how far we have come and on this eve of Thanksgiving, give gratitude to one another and to our friend Solome for gathering so many more people in the cave to press on with the idea. What a time to be innovating and advocating in mental health. We were so few then, exploring. We are innumerable now, infinitely stronger. And so, we do what Paul Tran beckons us to do…
Keep going.
The Cave
by Paul Tran
Someone standing at the mouth had
the idea to enter. To go further
than light or language could
go. As they followed
the idea, light and language followed
like two wolves—panting, hearing themselves
panting. A shapeless scent
in the damp air ...
Keep going, the idea said.
Someone kept going. Deeper and deeper, they saw
others had been there. Others had left
objects that couldn’t have found their way
there alone. Ocher-stained shells. Bird bones. Grounded
hematite. On the walls,
as if stepping into history, someone saw
their purpose: cows. Bulls. Bison. Deer. Horses—
some pregnant, some slaughtered.
The wild-
life seemed wild and alive, moving
when someone moved, casting their shadows
on the shadows stretching
in every direction. Keep going,
the idea said again. Go ...
Someone continued. They followed the idea so far inside that
outside was another idea.
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
― Joseph Campbell