– Mind­strong Health is apply­ing machine learn­ing meth­ods on human-smart­phone inter­ac­tions to iden­ti­fy dig­i­tal phe­no­typ­ing fea­tures that could be clin­i­cal­ly use­ful.

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Mind­strong Health Expands Exec­u­tive Team to Advance Tech­nol­o­gy for New Vir­tu­al Men­tal Health Care Mod­el (press release):

“Mind­strong Health, a health­care inno­va­tion com­pa­ny ded­i­cat­ed to trans­form­ing men­tal health through inno­va­tions in dig­i­tal mea­sure­ment and vir­tu­al care mod­els, today announced the addi­tion of ten senior exec­u­tives to its lead­er­ship team includ­ing CEO Daniel Graf, who joined the com­pa­ny in Octo­ber 2019.”

On top of Mr. Graf, Mind­strong Health has also recruit­ed: Read the rest of this entry »

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Should Com­bined CBT, Phar­ma­cother­a­py Be Recon­sid­ered in MDD? (Psy­chi­a­try Advi­sor):

“Cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) alone proved to be supe­ri­or to the com­bi­na­tion of psy­chother­a­py and anti­de­pres­sant med­ica­tion in the treat­ment of major depres­sive dis­or­der (MDD) in a sys­tem­at­ic review and meta-analy­sis pub­lished in Psy­cho­log­i­cal Med­i­cine.

Anti­de­pres­sant med­ica­tion is asso­ci­at­ed with side effects and with­draw­al symp­toms and 23% more expen­sive than psy­cho­log­i­cal inter­ven­tions, Read the rest of this entry »

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Accord­ing to the adver­tis­ing hype, you too can enjoy incred­i­ble neur­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits in the com­fort of your own home by using a sim­ple elec­tri­cal device that offers tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tDCS). For instance, three dif­fer­ent mod­els of tDCS devices sold online claim to improve mood, increase cre­ativ­i­ty, enhance mem­o­ry, accel­er­ate learn­ing, and com­bat pain and depres­sion. For the low, low price of between $99 and $189.95, you get a com­pact hand­held device with easy-to-use con­trols and two elec­tri­cal leads that end in small sponges. These sponges are dipped into saline solu­tion to make them cur­rent-car­ry­ing elec­trodes, then placed against your head. The web­sites typ­i­cal­ly show the sponges locat­ed on either side of the fore­head, but point out that they need to be placed else­where on the skull to acti­vate dif­fer­ent parts of the brain, depend­ing on the desired out­come.

Wher­ev­er you place the sponges, when you switch on the unit, you’re pump­ing elec­tric cur­rent into your brain, although not very much.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Life throws chaos at us on a reg­u­lar basis—whether it’s our finances, our rela­tion­ships, or our health. In the work world, around 50 per­cent of peo­ple are burned out in indus­tries like health care, bank­ing, and non­prof­its, and employ­ers spend $300 bil­lion per year on work­place-relat­ed stress.

In response, we just keep on push­ing through, sur­viv­ing on adren­a­line. We over­sched­ule our­selves; we drink anoth­er cof­fee; we respond to one more email. If we stay amped up all the time, we think, we’ll even­tu­al­ly be able to get things done.

But all that does is burn us out, drain our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and lead to exhaus­tion.

There’s anoth­er way—a calmer way. Cul­ti­vat­ing a more rest­ful, relaxed state of mind doesn’t mean we’ll drown under all our respon­si­bil­i­ties. Instead, research sug­gests it will bring us greater atten­tion, ener­gy, and cre­ativ­i­ty to tack­le them. And sci­ence also points to sim­ple ways we can tap into that calm state of mind to Read the rest of this entry »

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Just a heads-up about a great event lat­er this week in Dublin, Ire­land, for those work­ing on vir­tu­al and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty and health­care inno­va­tion.

When: Thu Dec 5, 2019 8:00 am — Fri Dec 6, 2019 5:00 pm.

Where: Dav­en­port Hotel

Featured sessions include:

Read the rest of this entry »