Introduction:

One in five people experience a Mental Health Disorder in any given year (HHS & Han, 2020), with over half of adults in the United States being diagnosed with a Mental Health Disorder within their lifetime (HHS & Han, 2020). A study performed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered that Anxiety and Depression diagnoses had increased four-fold during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (Czeisler et al., 2020). Moreover, three out of fifty people in the United States struggle with Substance Use Disorders (SUD), costing the economy $600 Billion per year (NIH & Volkow, 2018), while deaths from overdoses have tripled since 1990 (CDC et al., 2013). Studies show that Mental Health Disorders can spark SUDs, with 20% of those who struggle with Anxiety and Depression ending up struggling with SUD (Pettinati & Dundon, 2011). Furthermore, a study performed by the Department of Human and Health Services (HHS) in the United States indicates that 97.94% of those who struggle with Substance Use Disorder have an underlying Mental Health Disorder, with over a third of these individuals classified as having severe Mental Health Disorders (HHS & Han, 2020).

The purpose of this article is to validate the need for Measurement-Based Care (MBC) to effectively prevent and treat Mental Health Disorders, along with better reporting in behavioral health (BH). This article provides evidence around the benefits of adopting Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) technology to solve the prominent barriers of widespread use of MBC. The combination of RPM-enabled MBC can improve outcomes for patients while decreasing treatment times drastically, costs, and administrative burden on providers.