In this Inside RGA Q&A, Dr. Peter Farvolden, Mental Health Consultant, talks about his research into personality and temperament, the importance of accessible evidence-based treatment, and why he is fascinated by the intersection of insurance and mental health.
Dr. Peter Farvolden joined RGA as a Mental Health Consultant in August 2023. As a member of RGA’s Global Medical team, Dr. Farvolden collaborates with RGA teams around the world to provide clients with insights and strategies around mental health – part of RGA's commitment to address this growing need. He has 25 years of experience as a clinical psychologist and served for years as a researcher and clinic head at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada’s largest mental health teaching hospital. Dr. Farvolden talks about his research into temperament and personality, his experience with workplace mental health approaches, and why he was drawn to the intersection of insurance and mental health.
I grew up in a family of math-obsessed engineers but ended up going in the opposite direction. At university, I first studied philosophy and ethics, which led to an interest in theories of cognition and neuroscience, and then eventually into clinical psychology. I was fascinated by the complexity of the questions and the insights of my teachers and mentors.
I’ve been lucky to work nearly my entire career as a dual scientist-practitioner. As a practitioner, I’ve enjoyed engaging and satisfying clinical work with patients to solve their individual problems. As a scientist, I have collaborated with research teams to try to better understand how basic temperament and personality processes contribute to psychopathology and resiliency.
Overall, my work has focused on increasing access to effective evidence-based treatments and determining which interventions work best for whom and when.
At the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), I started researching personality and psychopathology to better understand the role of basic temperament and personality factors in the onset of and recovery from mood and anxiety disorders. All of us are born with a temperament, a way of being in the world. That disposition then interacts with outside factors – family, society, culture – to create our personality. My teams looked upstream to study the role of our basic temperaments in predicting mental illness, individual resiliency, and recovery outcomes.
In 2001, in the early years of the internet, I led research on web-based moderated self-help programs for smoking cessation, alcohol use, depression, and anxiety. This eventually led to the development of the MindBeacon iCBT (internet cognitive behavioral therapy) platform, which is now one of Canada’s leading providers of digital therapy treatments.
I also ran the Psychological Trauma Program at CAMH for many years, which at the time was the specialty PTSD clinic for the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB). Many of our patients worked in construction, manufacturing, and other heavy industries, or were first responders. They had suffered devastating physical injuries and were frequently struggling with psychological injuries, too. This is where I really started to appreciate the mind-body connection, disability management and workplace mental health.
I am thrilled to join RGA and delve into insurance and mental health. The issues and challenges at this intersection include some of the most interesting long-standing questions in psychiatry and psychology. These questions include:
As insurers expand mental health benefits, the industry will continue to wrestle with all these questions. The potential impact is huge. Pre-pandemic, in 2019, one in every eight people in the world suffered from a mental disorder. The pandemic drove a 25% increase in depression and anxiety disorders, so now approximately one billion people in the world live with poor mental health. It’s wonderful that industry leaders like RGA are focusing more intently on mental health products and new approaches for the risk assessment of people living with mental health problems.
