Stop being so predictable with your solutions
Why we should lean more into the creative side of problem solving
It was 1993 and I was neck deep in high school. Learning which way was up, how to manage all those basketball practices with school work, and establishing my social circles, took up most of my time. However, the soundtrack running in the background of my life was Radiohead’s debut album Pablo Honey. I was lucky enough to have a CD player, and listened to this album as if it were all that existed. Years prior I had literally wore out my tape decks of U2’s Rattle and Hum and INXS’s Kick so was happy to have a CD that would let me listen endlessly.
And listen I did.
I found Thom Yorke’s haunting vocals and strange lyrics, Jonny Greenwood’s erratic and cacophonous guitar playing, Colin Greenwood’s hypnotic baselines, Ed O’Brien’s steady but creative rhythm guitar, and the ever surprising percussion work by Philip Selway, to be something I had never really heard before. But rather than dwell on this album, I want to embrace what Radiohead did next. You see, most artists, especially those that have had some commercial success, are encouraged to reproduce the formula that worked so well the first time. Radiohead didn’t feel that they needed to play by these rules and released The Bends just a few years later. Anyone listening to these two albums in sequence can hear a band in a beautiful creative space - playing around with sound, lyrics, and composition that created new and exciting songs and kept us coming along for the ride.
Not to be content with this evolution, Radiohead kept going and going. Their work got more exciting and it was almost like the band found a unique creative space that allowed each artist to embrace whatever direction they wanted to go in. The magic for Radiohead is that it all worked. While the band is still together, various members have pursued several side projects, including Jonny Greenwood’s film composing and Thom Yorke’s never ending collaborations. Their creative work has helped set the tone of a generation.
It’s 2024, and I can’t help but start the new year feeling energized, excited about what’s to come. A lot of what’s happened in the mental health space the last few years has been good. There’s been some hits - some big policy wins like the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which did a ton for mental health, including putting more money into schools for mental health services. We got 988 the new national suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline off the ground. We’ve seen states continue to pass laws that further what we’ve seen possible before for mental health. I could go on - progress is good, but it forces me to keep going back to what else needs to be done for our communities.
Creativity is the lifeblood of progress and innovation, and a crucial element in navigating our ever-evolving world. It’s not just about artistic expression, it’s something that permeates every aspect of life. At its core, creativity is about seeing the familiar in unfamiliar ways, forging connections between seemingly disparate ideas, and envisioning what does not yet exist. Its importance cannot be overstated; creativity drives problem-solving, fosters resilience in the face of challenges, and is essential for personal and collective growth. In a rapidly changing world, where old solutions often fail to address new problems, creativity is the key to adaptation and survival. It empowers us to challenge the status quo, reimagine our future, and craft innovative solutions to both everyday dilemmas and global issues. By nurturing creativity, we not only enrich our own lives but also contribute to a more vibrant, dynamic, and capable society.
I think for 2024, I am going to lean into creativity as a strategy for more radical mental health reform. There's something that happens when we stop pursuing innovative ideas and fall back on what's always been told to us to be the solution. This is not to minimize any of the efforts that are out there, but more to point out that sometimes these efforts just simply don't move the needle as much as we might want.
How can we reinvent ourselves? How can we think more creatively and disruptively about our solutions?
While the various members of Radiohead continue to push boundaries on what people expected them, those of us in the mental health field often have very little flexibility on how creative we can get. Let's change that.
Let the actual end user be the designer: For too long we have ignored the power and importance of lived experience. Those who have first hand experience of the challenges associated with trying to get care in this overly cumbersome system know all too well the frustrations and redundancies that are apparent at every turn. Admittedly, many of us who are experts, still don't get all the nuances that many other folks who have far less academic knowledge but far more on the ground experience have. There's a potent combination that can emerge here of talents and experience coming together to create new and novel recommendations for redesign and reform.
And more and more authoritative bodies are calling for this approach. Collaboratively developing strategies and policies with these leaders ensures that mental health care aligns more closely with the real needs and experiences of those it serves. Embracing the principle of "nothing about us, without us" can lead to more effective, stigma-reducing, and engaging mental health services, ultimately broadening their impact and reach.
Get back to the basics: I have said it here repeatedly before but the most cruel irony in all of health care is that the people who need help the most have to work the hardest to get it. Because of the overly complex and cumbersome system, finding timely help can be its own frustration. In addition, there aren't consistent rules of the road to know how to navigate such a curvy and treacherous terrain. Never mind that you are also likely dealing with a pretty significant crisis or emotional load that makes seeing things clear a lot more difficult. I'd love for us to rethink from the ground up what an actual system of care could look like for people across the full continuum of care. This is not just about crisis response and not just about traditional clinical care, it's about prevention and community empowerment and rethinking who the actual front line for mental health should be. These are exciting concepts that are grounded in the literature and just rarely pursued in current discourse because they just seem so simple in concept and almost impossible to embrace in execution.
Why shouldn't care be wherever we need it? Why shouldn't we rethink what mental health care actually is? These should be more than rhetorical questions, they should actually be at the foundation of all our conversations around mental health.
Pay for what works: It shouldn't be a novelty for us to actually pay for things that work. In other service industries, it happens all the time. None of us would be satisfied paying a substantial amount of money for a new tire on our car if that tire didn't actually work. Yet, this metaphor plays out in egregious ways throughout the health care system every day. For mental health to be able to truly advance, we need an adequate infrastructure that allows us to assess what works and what doesn't work. And we need a payment system that supports that. This means that there are going to be times when the most powerful intervention for someone's mental health falls far outside of what health care traditionally sees its role as. Think about housing, food insecurity, safety, all of these are paramount to good mental health yet we see them as social programs that should be disconnected or separate from health care. We have to change this paradigm and get more creative about what we pay for.
On that classic Pablo Honey album, Radiohead had a song entitled “Anyone Can Play Guitar.” It's actually kind of a good metaphor to close out here with. Yes, conceptually anyone can play the guitar, it requires having an instrument, practicing, learning, basic skills, practicing more, and finding a way that your song works for you. For the mental health field, it's like we have inherited someone's interpretation of a guitar and what that music should sound like. Maybe it's time we rethink that. Maybe it's time we pick up a guitar ourselves and take a strum at it to see what music we can make.
Just as Radiohead's Pablo Honey was a soundtrack to my high school years, symbolizing a break from the conventional, it's time we embrace a similar break from traditional approaches in mental health. Each album was an evolution from a band that was always looking for new ways to express themselves. I think we need to do the same. Let's be creative with how we approach our solutions for mental health. Let's make 2024 a year where we unabashedly embrace novelty and innovation and creativity in a way that can drive meaningful outcomes for all our communities.
Ben, Happy New Year.
Today you said, "At its core, creativity is about seeing the familiar in unfamiliar ways, forging connections between seemingly disparate ideas, and envisioning what does not yet exist. Its importance cannot be overstated;" My 47 years working to develop new medical technologies hit a roadblock about 10 years ago when I entered the field of Behavioral Health. All those shinny new technologies I had worked on found eager adopters, but straying into the mental and spiritual side of health requires people to change they way they think and the way they behave - both patients and clinicians. There is no CT or MRI for that. That's why I value your writing so much - you see the possibilities. I hope you have even greater influence in the new year.
You had me at Radiohead.
Funnily enough, I wrote about how the dystopia computer-voiced fitter happier from Radiohead’s OK Computer, the best album ever made, is some unexpectedly good advice that could help us be better men. https://open.substack.com/pub/kathekon/p/fitter-happier?r=7j6pb&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post