Having one or more Mental Health diagnosis greatly increases the risk of (or worsens the severity of) Addiction disease. The reverse is also true: acquiring one or more Addiction(s) worsens the risk of acquiring (or having a more severe course of) Mental Illness. This is born out in both large-scale population studies (that reveal that most patients diagnosed with mental illness will also have a past or current addiction(s) of some kind, and vice versa), and in basic science investigations that have uncovered multiple causal and biological causal linkages between addiction and mental illness pathogenesis, spanning genetics, traumatic environments, brain circuitry, psychopharmacology, and behavior. Unfortunately, patients are harmed by false, non-science-based assumptions that a) patients with mental illness and addictions are totally different, unrelated populations;

b) the brain illnesses exist as separate non-interactive entities; c) one illness is a ‘medication’ for the other; and d) one illness can and should be adequately treated without regard to the other. Although the science is clear that these disease classes are biologically and neurodevelopmentally inter-related, they are typically not treated adequately, efficiently or at the best standard of care in systems that ignore or are incapable of treating both mental illness and addiction in an evidence-based, integrated way. While 2x4 Model Clinics reject the referral-merry go round and multi-prescriber chaos that has typified much of the U.S. behavioral health system, it aims to provide highly coordinated and coherent treatment plans that are flexibly individualizable and responsive to both short and long-term outcome measures that focus on and take full professional responsibility for whatever combination of addiction and mental illness a patient may have

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By investing in the We2x4 project, both private and public investors will be able to be a part of a revolutionary project inf the field of addiction psychiatry. As the project becomes officially implemented nationally and globally, investors will be able to get a return on their investment in the form of royalties from platform license fees.

By design, each 2x4 Model Addiction Psychiatry clinic is capable of treating the entire spectrum of addiction, mental illness and their many comorbid combinations with its patient populations, by one team under one roof at the highest standard of science based care. This design means that best, science-based practices are wedded to the capacity of the clinical team and patients to form long-term therapeutic alliances and bonds, regardless of how patient’s illnesses may evolve through either recovery or different disease phases (e.g., without having to split the care or referring the patient out to other behavioral health providers).

Because of the comprehensive quality of care that each 2x4 Model clinic can deliver, building a national network of 2x4 Model addiction psychiatry clinics has transformative potential in making excellent, physician-based integrative behavioral health care widely accessible, ending the chaos, fragmentation and poor standards of care that have defined U.S. behavioral health in recent decades. The We2x4 platform as a “Clinical Swiss Army Knife, Virtual University and Research Facebook” for the field of Addiction Psychiatry: In advancing a widely accessible, addiction psychiatry network based on the 2x4 Model, the We2x4 platform has significant potential in unlocking the full potential of brain-behavioral health in more decisively preventing and reducing the massive burden of medical and surgical morbidity that untreated addictions and mental illness produce, while providing working strategy toward ending the cruel and ineffective national disgrace of mass-incarceration of mentally ill-addicted people. The educational and research collaborative functions of the We2x4.org platform will also work to center professional training and integrative research across the Addiction Psychiatry network. This will broadly support greater multidisciplinary cross-training of behavioral health professionals in both mental health and addiction care, and it will foster and amplify tighter linkages between treatment research and clinical practice in addiction psychiatry. Through the We2x4 platform, Addiction Psychiatry Clinics accoss the membership will have transparent and reliable knowledge of other clinic’s expertise and standards of practice, as implied by fidelity with the 2x4 Model design. This knowledge as well as efficient cross network communication provided by the We2x4 platform will allow unprecedented levels of coherent clinical and research collaborations, needed to develop more clinical breakthroughs and deliver them more rapidly to patients in need.

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The Student Portal contains educational information for patients and families seeking expert integrated care for addiction and mental illness. This information focuses on the importance of science to addiction psychiatry, while conveying knowledge about the brain biology and experience of having different mental illness/addiction disease states and their comorbidities. Literature and blogs are provided to help patients and families discern between substandard practice offerings and quackery vs. evidence-based practices and excellent standards of care. Explicit descriptions of the professional expertise, treatment offerings and high standards of care (consistent with the 2x4 Model design) that are required for the Full membership of the We2x4 Network are provided. This information along with a living map of the We2x4 Addiction Psychiatry Network is accessible to help patients and families access treatment options with a transparent understanding of the quality of care and expertise they should expect (without obscuration by buzz-word based-internet marketing, name branding, architectural appearances, or cost-reputations). Finally, the Public Portal provides a We2x4 log-on interface for patients seeking treatment in a member We2x4 clinic that will be utilizing the We2x4 remote clinical telemetry option.

The Student Portal aims to connect patients and families not only with integrative addiction psychiatry professionals and 2x4 Model treatment teams, but with other patients and families undergoing similar difficulties, pertaining to illness impact and the challenges of finding good treatment.