Study: Self-guided sleep app Sleepio, combined with standard care for depression and anxiety, delivers better outcomes than standard care alone

Study backs ben­e­fit of insom­nia DTx Sleepio on men­tal health (pharmapho­rum): The study – pub­lished in the jour­nal Behav­iour Research and Ther­a­py – test­ed the Sleepio app devel­oped by dig­i­tal health spe­cial­ist Big Health as an add-on to stan­dard NHS care for anx­i­ety and depres­sion under the improv­ing access to psy­cho­log­i­cal ther­a­pies (IAPT) pol­i­cy. Patients…

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Update: The latest research and noninvasive neurotechnologies for brain health and mental fitness

Time for a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter! 1. Food for (non­par­ti­san) Thought: Should heads of state and can­di­dates to high office pass a cognitive/ men­tal fit­ness test? 2. A school psy­chol­o­gist shares good tips to sup­port our kids and, yes, man­age our own stress. Three Ss to reduce the stress of “home­school­ing” our kids: Sim­pli­fy, Structure,…

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Kaiser Permanente offers Calm mental fitness app at no cost to millions of members

Med­i­ta­tion app Calm is now free for Kaiser Per­ma­nen­te’s mil­lions of mem­bers (CNBC): Kaiser Per­ma­nente is try­ing to give its 12.4 mil­lion mem­bers a lit­tle bit of calm. Start­ing Tues­day, the health-care provider is allow­ing patients to down­load the Calm med­i­ta­tion app for free as part of a way to help cus­tomers man­age anx­i­ety as they…

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Portable brain assessment device by Headsafe secures 510(k) FDA clearance

__ FDA Clears Nurocheck, Portable Device to Quick­ly Assess Brain Health (MS News Today): “A portable device that can quick­ly mea­sure elec­tri­cal activ­i­ty in the brain and relay it to doc­tors via a smart­phone app, called the Nurochek sys­tem, has been cleared by the Unit­ed States Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) for use as a medical…

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Big Ten Conference announces “Mental Health and Wellness Cabinet” and Calm app rollout

__ Big Ten Con­fer­ence Announces Men­tal Health Ini­tia­tives (press release): “The Big Ten Con­fer­ence for­mal­ly announced today, in con­junc­tion with Men­tal Health Aware­ness Month, the for­ma­tion of the Big Ten Men­tal Health and Well­ness Cab­i­net, which includes rep­re­sen­ta­tives from all 14 Big Ten insti­tu­tions, as well as sport affil­i­ate mem­bers Johns Hop­kins (women’s and men’s…

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Mixed reactions on the development of digital biomarkers and growth of Mindstrong Health

___ (More on the pos­i­tive side, at MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review) The smart­phone app that can tell you’re depressed before you know it your­self: “There are about 45 mil­lion peo­ple in the US alone with a men­tal ill­ness, and those ill­ness­es and their cours­es of treat­ment can vary tremen­dous­ly. But there is some­thing most of those people…

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