Cardano & Psychotherapy Quality

Mental health is deteriorating worldwide. Innovation is needed to stop this escalation, as the public do not see value on PS.

Control and solving of PS issues (e.g., iatrogenic effects, dropout rates, results hammering, improvisation).

Blockchain technology can contribute to the improvement of PS by building decentralised applications, that psychotherapists and service users can (and should) use to solve the abovementioned (among others) PS issues.

From the perspective of hard science, psychology is not a real science. New ideas and actions to mitigate public's criticism, and work on the sources of public's skepticism, are needed. Otherwise, the public may increase the seek of aid for its mental health in other sources (e.g., medication, spirituality, alternative and complementary therapies).

Major and frequent public criticisms

1. psychology is mere common sense;
2. psychology does not use scientific methods;
3. generalizations cannot be made with psychology because each person is unique;
4. the results of studies in psychology are not replicable;
5. psychology does not make accurate predictions; and
6. psychology is not useful to society.

Potential sources of public skepticism

1. psychology's failure to self-monitor;
2. psychology's poor public image;
3. the indistinction between psychologists and psychiatrists;
4. the retrospective bias (i.e., the perception that one already knew something after it was made known);
5. the illusion of understanding (i.e., for many people psychology is easier than e.g., physics);
6. eliminative reductionism (human beings tend to get simple explanations and science seeks parsimonious explanations, so psychology's explanations may seem less scientific than, e.g., neuroscience's);
7. the excuse of scientific impotence (i.e., when the conclusions of studies are at odds with common sense intuitions); and
8. the failure to distinguish basic research from applied research.

Professional-internal problems

1. iatrogenic (or deterioration) effects (i.e., adverse outcomes resulting from a psychotherapeutic process);
2. dropout rates (studies emphasize that between 20-57% of service users do not return to psychotherapy sessions after their initial consultation);
3. databases' hammering (i.e., the deletion and/or change of results to make them correspond to the desired outcome);
4. improvisation (i.e., not following an effective technical protocol scientifically based) and
5. psychotherapists' burnout (i.e., receiving fragile service users, in need of quality psychotherapy services, not being well, may contribute to service users' dropout and deterioration).

Scientificity of psychology and PS still have a long path to walk. Cardano can be a pioneer in this field, by contributing to the solving of issues in PS in a decentralized, innovative, and secure way, thus helping to increase PS's quality, and, more importantly, contributing to the mitigation of global mental health deterioration.

Success metrics may involve the comparison of the current, with the yearly (after deployment of decentralized applications at Cardano blockchain), iatrogenic effects, dropout rates, quantity and quality of technical protocols, psychotherapists' burnout, public criticism and skepticism. These variables must be obtained in umbrella reviews, meta-analysis, literature reviews, and metasynthesis.

The budget encompasses a desirable initial number of five good projects, with a mean of $20,000 for each.