Clinicians and academics should engage users when reviewing mental health apps, study finds

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– Get­ty Images

Study: Pro­fes­sion­al, con­sumer opin­ions dif­fer on men­tal health app qual­i­ty (Mobi­Health News):

Researchers found low agree­ment between pro­fes­sion­als’ and con­sumers’ reviews of men­tal health apps.

The study, pub­lished in JMIR, assessed 11 men­tal health apps using web sur­veys admin­is­tered between Decem­ber 2020 and April 2021. The apps assessed includ­ed Breethe, Calm, Head­space, Insight Timer Med­i­ta­tion, Mind­Doc, Mind­Shift, Reflect­ly, Remente, San­vel­lo, Self-Help for Anx­i­ety and Woe­bot. [Read more…] about Clin­i­cians and aca­d­e­mics should engage users when review­ing men­tal health apps, study finds

Headspace Health’s Leslie Witt on the future of mental health: Meditation, text-based coaching, teletherapy, telepsychiatry, and community

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Q&A: How Head­space Health’s acqui­si­tions alter its men­tal health prod­uct (Mobi­Health­News):

Head­space Health has revealed two acqui­si­tions this year, the lat­est com­ing ear­li­er this month when the dig­i­tal men­tal health com­pa­ny announced the pur­chase of men­tal well­ness app Shine. [Read more…] about Head­space Health’s Leslie Witt on the future of men­tal health: Med­i­ta­tion, text-based coach­ing, telether­a­py, telepsy­chi­a­try, and community

Study: Building muscle mass helps delay cognitive decline beyond the value of exercise itself

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A new rea­son to build mus­cle: brain health (The Globe and Mail):

… a recent study from researchers at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty, pub­lished in the jour­nal JAMA Net­work Open, offers a new rea­son for con­tin­u­ing to work on build­ing mus­cle: It’s good for your brain, not just your biceps. Greater mus­cle mass, the results sug­gest, helps ward off cog­ni­tive decline in old­er adults beyond what you’d expect based on their exer­cise lev­els alone. [Read more…] about Study: Build­ing mus­cle mass helps delay cog­ni­tive decline beyond the val­ue of exer­cise itself

Madrid, 29 de septiembre: ¿Cómo debemos aplicar la neurotecnología en la clínica y en la educación?

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Descrip­ción: La med­i­c­i­na, la psi­cología y la edu­cación están asistien­do a la irrup­ción de una gran can­ti­dad de nuevos enfo­ques gra­cias a la colab­o­ración con otras dis­ci­plinas como la inge­niería, la elec­tróni­ca o la com­putación. Estos nuevos enfo­ques pro­po­nen cri­te­rios y man­eras de abor­dar el neu­rode­sar­rol­lo y su aspec­tos patológi­cos (TND) de man­eras muy difer­entes a lo que se ha venido real­izan­do en las últi­mas décadas.

Her­ramien­tas como la inteligen­cia arti­fi­cial, las inter­faces cere­bro-orde­nador, la tDCS y la real­i­dad vir­tu­al están facil­i­tan­do la creación de un nue­vo aban­i­co de abor­da­jes en el cam­po del tratamien­to de pacientes y otros nuevos enfo­ques se abren camino en la estim­u­lación del neu­rode­sar­rol­lo. Por eso, no podemos evi­tar pre­gun­tarnos: ¿cómo influye la tec­nología al cere­bro humano y más en con­cre­to al cere­bro infan­til? ¿Qué límites, ries­gos y ben­efi­cios tiene el uso de estas tecnologías?

Cuán­do: jueves 29 de sep­tiem­bre de 2022 10:00 – 18:30 CEST [Read more…] about Madrid, 29 de sep­tiem­bre: ¿Cómo debe­mos aplicar la neu­rotec­nología en la clíni­ca y en la educación?

Study: Practicing gratitude helps lower physiological stress levels of the “expresser” AND the “receiver”

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Express­ing grat­i­tude nur­tures our rela­tion­ships, help­ing us to feel clos­er to our friends and roman­tic part­ners. Some research sug­gests that grate­ful peo­ple seem to cope bet­ter with stress and enjoy supe­ri­or phys­i­cal health, per­haps because of those stronger social relationships.

What about expe­ri­enc­ing grat­i­tude with peo­ple we don’t know so well—like those we work with? Could show­ing appre­ci­a­tion towards them affect our stress lev­els on the job? [Read more…] about Study: Prac­tic­ing grat­i­tude helps low­er phys­i­o­log­i­cal stress lev­els of the “express­er” AND the “receiv­er”

Building cognitive reserve helps delay memory and thinking decline regardless of genetic or childhood markers

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain news and a few fun brain teasers to test your per­cep­tu­al and cog­ni­tive skills.

#1. Study: Build­ing cog­ni­tive reserve helps delay mem­o­ry and think­ing decline regard­less of genet­ic or child­hood markers

“While our child­hood can influ­ence our mem­o­ry and think­ing skills lat­er in life, this research under­lines the mes­sage that it’s nev­er too late to take action to sup­port cog­ni­tive health.” — Dr Sara Imari­sio, Head of Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives at Alzheimer’s Research UK

#2. Ful­ly-auto­mat­ed analy­sis of voice recordings–from neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal tests–found to help dif­fer­en­ti­ate nor­mal cog­ni­tion from demen­tia and mild cog­ni­tive impairment

As the researchers point out, “The pro­posed approach offers a ful­ly auto­mat­ed iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of MCI and demen­tia based on a record­ed neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal test, pro­vid­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op a remote screen­ing tool that could be adapt­ed eas­i­ly to any language”

#3. Debunk­ing the “chem­i­cal imbal­ance” the­o­ry yet not throw­ing out the anti­de­pres­sant baby with the bathwater

“Depres­sion is usu­al­ly man­aged effec­tive­ly with anti­de­pres­sants or by talk­ing treat­ments, such as cog­ni­tive behav­iour ther­a­py, despite an incom­plete under­stand­ing of the con­di­tion and how these treat­ments work. We can­not know if treat­ments address the under­ly­ing prob­lem because we haven’t yet iden­ti­fied what that is. To imply that SSRI anti­de­pres­sants may not be worth­while is to mis­un­der­stand an evi­dence base that says the very opposite.”

#4. Q&A with researcher Robb Rut­ledge on men­tal health, expec­ta­tions, deci­sion-mak­ing and hol­i­day planning

“Recent events have a big­ger impact on hap­pi­ness than ear­li­er events, so it can be a good strat­e­gy to save a cou­ple things that have a chance of a big pos­i­tive sur­prise for the last few days of your trip. It could be a nov­el expe­ri­ence that a lot of peo­ple like but you’re not sure what to expect … It prob­a­bly isn’t anoth­er muse­um. Just make sure it’s not some­thing that could get rained out”

#5. How much should you trust Bet­ter­Help, Talk­space, Cere­bral and oth­er men­tal health start-ups tout­ed by celebrities?

“Many U.S. adults aren’t able to find help because of a short­age of ther­a­pists. Near­ly 40% are strug­gling with men­tal health or sub­stance abuse issues, accord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Prevention.
So mil­lions of peo­ple are turn­ing to online companies…”

#6. Dig­i­tal men­tal health inter­ven­tion by the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) found to low­er anx­i­ety and depres­sion, with improve­ments main­tained at 3?month follow-up

As acknowl­edged “The main lim­i­ta­tion of the cur­rent tri­al is the high dropout rate”, but con­text is key: “Most dis­placed peo­ple with men­tal dis­or­ders in low- and mid­dle-income coun­tries do not receive effec­tive care, and their access to care has dete­ri­o­rat­ed dur­ing the Coro­n­avirus Dis­ease 2019 (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic”. — Inno­va­tion does­n’t need to be per­fect, just better/ cheaper/ more acces­si­ble than alternatives.

#7. Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics pio­neer Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs goes pub­lic, rais­ing $150M+; trades down 49% first day

Quite dif­fi­cult mar­ket envi­ron­ment for an impor­tant evi­dence-based inno­va­tion — good news is they raised enough funds to test approach in the real world over the next 12–24 months. Let’s see!

#8. Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) meets Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (CBT): Wysa rais­es $20M to scale up men­tal health chatbot

“Typ­i­cal­ly, access to a men­tal health ser­vice is gat­ed. It is restrict­ed by some kind of diag­no­sis — say­ing only if you are severe enough you will be able to get to speak to a ther­a­pist because obvi­ous­ly ther­a­py is expen­sive and somebody’s got to pay for it” … the app offers “ear­ly engage­ment and a safe space where peo­ple can come in and anony­mous­ly just talk about what’s both­er­ing them.”

Final­ly, here are three quick brain teas­er games to test your per­cep­tu­al and cog­ni­tive skills. Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing month of September!