On the 7 Habits of Highly Stress-Resilient Minds, cognitive screenings, anti-amyloid drugs, and more

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, this time cov­er­ing the lat­est devel­op­ments in stress research, med­i­ta­tion, vir­tu­al real­i­ty, anti-amy­loid drugs, cog­ni­tive screen­ings, and more. #1. The 7 Habits of High­ly Stress-Resilient Minds “Any­thing worth doing will have aspects of stress woven through: chal­lenge, dis­com­fort, risk. We can’t change that. But what we can change is…

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8‑week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course found to be as effective as Lexapro (escitalopram) to treat adults with anxiety disorders, and with far fewer side effects

Anx­i­ety is the most com­mon psy­chi­atric dis­or­der, with over 301 mil­lion ?peo­ple affect­ed around the world. Whether extreme anx­i­ety aris­es in social sit­u­a­tions, is trig­gered by a par­tic­u­lar pho­bia, or man­i­fests as a gen­er­al unease in the world, it can severe­ly affect people’s every­day func­tion­ing and lead to high lev­els of dis­tress. Luck­i­ly, there are…

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Harnessing mindfulness and virtual reality simulations to maximize sports performance

Ath­letes at the very high­est lev­el of their sport face the chal­lenge of per­form­ing con­sis­tent­ly under pres­sure amid many poten­tial dis­trac­tions, includ­ing per­for­mance anx­i­ety, crowd behav­iour, their own and oth­ers’ expec­ta­tions, and the respons­es of their oppo­nents. The per­for­mance of play­ers in the 2023 Aus­tralian Open, for exam­ple, demon­strat­ed the psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tors need­ed to succeed…

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The 7 Habits of Highly Stress-Resilient Minds

Are you suf­fer­ing from chron­ic stress? Many of us are—whether we’re stressed out by our jobs, com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ships, care­giv­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties, or the gen­er­al state of the world. That’s where Elis­sa Epel’s new book, The Stress Pre­scrip­tion, comes in. A health psy­chol­o­gist and direc­tor of the Aging, Metab­o­lism, and Emo­tions Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San…

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Dos and Don’ts of Therapy on the Go: Navigating the use of apps for mental health care

It might be sur­pris­ing to think about brows­ing for ther­a­pists and order­ing up men­tal health care the way you can peruse a menu on Grub­hub or sum­mon a car on Lyft. But over the last decade, dig­i­tal access to ther­a­py has become increas­ing­ly com­mon, in some cas­es replac­ing the tra­di­tion­al mod­el of in-per­­son week­ly ses­sions between…

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APA: With digital mental health going mainstream, will/ should psychologists be able to “prescribe” interventions?

Men­tal health, meet ven­ture cap­i­tal (APA): Until recent­ly, men­tal health was a rel­a­tive blip on the radar of ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists. But over the past few years, and par­tic­u­lar­ly since the onset of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, pri­vate investors have made a dra­mat­ic run for this space, pour­ing $3.1 bil­lion into men­tal health ven­tures by the third…

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