No field of medicine is in more dire need of new perspectives and new treatments than mental health. Despite the last 50 years seeing a proliferation of pharmacological and behavioral treatments, rates of mental illness—especially depression, anxiety, and substance abuse—continue to climb in the United States, with no strong evidence that our treatments are materially impacting these conditions on a society-wide level.

The ”Novel Approaches to Behavioral Health Innovation” Lecture Series seeks to address this mental health crisis head-on by providing fresh, scientifically-supported perspectives on mental illness. Importantly, these perspectives are far from merely theoretical. Rather, they provide a framework for understanding a range of new evidence-based treatments that, while not typically part of the clinician’s current toolbox, are in many cases are either already available or are about to be available for clinical use. In contrast to standard medication-based approaches to treating conditions such as depression and anxiety, the novel interventions explored in this lecture series approach emotional health in ways that leverage ecological and psychosocial understandings of wellbeing and that tap into evolved human capacities for strengthen psychological and physical resilience factors that are protective against mental illness.