Virtual cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) accounts for over 30% of NHS mental health treatments — up from 10% in 2017

By SharpBrains | July 12, 2023

Con­cern as a third of NHS men­tal health treat­ments shift online (The Guardian): An Observ­er analy­sis of data from pri­vate providers, cross-checked against NHS fig­ures, reveals around one in three men­tal health treat­ments in Eng­land are deliv­ered online, up from one in five in 2019, and one in 10 in 2017. Patients with mild to…

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Should doctors prescribe Leqembi (lecanemab) to women with early Alzheimer’s Disease? The evidence-based answer is probably No

By SharpBrains | June 28, 2023

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time a range of inter­ven­tions for brain/ cognitive/ men­tal health plus a few brain teasers to test our per­cep­tion and cog­ni­tive skills. #1. Should doc­tors pre­scribe lecanemab (Leqem­bi) to women? The answer, giv­en avail­able evi­dence, is prob­a­bly No Huge (and most­ly over­looked) red flag regard­ing newly…

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Growing controversy over role of FDA and Medicare in promoting anti-amyloid drugs given limited benefit, high cost, severe side-effects

By SharpBrains | June 21, 2023

The War Over Whether Medicare Should Pay For The New Anti-Alzheimer’s Drugs (Forbes): The pow­er­ful Alzheimer’s Dis­ease lob­by is fight­ing a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar bat­tle on two fronts. It is qui­et­ly try­ing to lim­it restric­tions the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion puts on the use of new drugs aimed at slow­ing the pro­gres­sion of the brain dis­ease. And…

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Smartphone-based cognitive behavioral therapy found to significantly decrease insomnia, substantially outperforming sleep education

By SharpBrains | May 17, 2023

Dig­i­tal Ther­a­py for Insom­nia More Effec­tive Than Sleep Edu­ca­tion, Study Finds (Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Man­aged Care): A smart­­phone-based, Chi­nese culture­–adapted dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py for insom­nia (DCBT‑I) appli­ca­tion improved insom­nia sever­i­ty com­pared with sleep edu­ca­tion, accord­ing to find­ings of a study pub­lished in JAMA Net­work Open. Researchers want­ed to study the effi­ca­cy of this DCBT‑I app compared…

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Study shows the power of electroencephalography and machine learning to help predict response to psychotherapy (or lack thereof) in patients with PTSD

By SharpBrains | May 2, 2023

A fas­ci­nat­ing study just pub­lished in Nature Men­tal Health aimed at help­ing pre­dict the out­comes of psy­chother­a­py for patients with Post-Trau­­mat­ic Stress Dis­or­der (PTSD) using Machine Learn­ing (ML) and elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy (EEG) data. PTSD is a men­tal health con­di­tion trig­gered by expe­ri­enc­ing or wit­ness­ing a trau­mat­ic event; two evi­­dence-based treatments–Prolonged Expo­sure (PE) and Cog­ni­tive Pro­cess­ing Ther­a­py (CPT)–are…

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