cognitive-behavioral-therapy

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

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Wysa rais­es $20 mil­lion to expand its ther­a­pist chat­bot into a wider set of men­tal health ser­vices (TechCrunch):

Wysa, a pop­u­lar men­tal health app orig­i­nal­ly found­ed in India around an AI chat­bot that helps users talk through their feel­ings, has raised $20 mil­lion in a Series B fund­ing round to expand its busi­ness on the heels of hit­ting 4.5 mil­lion users in 65 countries.

The all-equi­ty round is led by India’s dig­i­tal health-focused ven­ture cap­i­tal fund HealthQuad, with par­tic­i­pa­tion also from British Inter­na­tion­al Invest­ment (BII), the U.K.’s devel­op­ment finance insti­tu­tion. The plan will be to use the mon­ey to dou­ble down on its home mar­ket as well as the U.S. and U.K, where it already has respec­tive­ly had approvals from the FDA and the Nation­al Health Ser­vice (NHS) and is used by the lat­ter as part of its online men­tal health ser­vices. [Read more…] about Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) meets Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (CBT): Wysa rais­es $20M to scale up men­tal health chatbot

AI-enabled chatbot Wysa receives FDA Breakthrough Device designation for patients with chronic pain, depression and anxiety

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AI Behav­ior Health Chat­bot App Fast-Tracked by FDA (Psy­chol­o­gy Today):

Recent­ly the U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) grant­ed break­through device des­ig­na­tion to Wysa’s AI-based dig­i­tal men­tal health con­ver­sa­tion­al agent that deliv­ers cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) via a smart­phone to adults suf­fer­ing from depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and chron­ic mus­cu­loskele­tal pain [Read more…] about AI-enabled chat­bot Wysa receives FDA Break­through Device des­ig­na­tion for patients with chron­ic pain, depres­sion and anxiety

Headspace Health acquires AI-driven digital mental health start-up Sayana

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JPM 2022: Head­space Health grabs start­up Sayana to build out AI-based men­tal health tools (Fierce Healthcare):

Six months after the $3 bil­lion merg­er with Gin­ger, Head­space Health acquired Sayana, an AI-dri­ven men­tal health and well­ness company.

Sayana will expand Head­space Health’s abil­i­ty to pro­vide per­son­al­ized self-care con­tent to its 100 mil­lion users, exec­u­tives said … Head­space lever­ages AI to pow­er a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the care the com­pa­ny deliv­ers, [Rus­sell Glass, CEO, Head­space Health] said dur­ing the JPM con­fer­ence, includ­ing using nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing to extract infor­ma­tion from the chats, to sum­ma­rize coach notes and care infor­ma­tion and to mon­i­tor for sui­ci­dal­i­ty … [Read more…] about Head­space Health acquires AI-dri­ven dig­i­tal men­tal health start-up Sayana

The American Medical Association’s (AMA) to ease access to remote Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Monitoring

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The Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics Alliance Wel­comes Deci­sion by the CPT® Edi­to­r­i­al Pan­el to Clar­i­fy Report­ing of Remote Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py Mon­i­tor­ing Ser­vices (press release):

As the lead­ing inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion on dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic thought lead­er­ship and edu­ca­tion, the Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics Alliance (DTA) wel­comes the Amer­i­can Med­ical Association’s (AMA) Cur­rent Pro­ce­dur­al Ter­mi­nol­o­gy (CPT®) Edi­to­r­i­al Pan­el’s recent deci­sion to clar­i­fy report­ing of remote cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) mon­i­tor­ing ser­vices. The changes to the CPT code set reflect the grow­ing recog­ni­tion that dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics (DTx) are an effec­tive treat­ment for patients with men­tal health con­di­tions and physi­cians should ulti­mate­ly be reim­bursed for their time spent pre­scrib­ing, mon­i­tor­ing, and sup­ply­ing online CBT tech­nolo­gies. [Read more…] about The Amer­i­can Med­ical Association’s (AMA) to ease access to remote Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py Monitoring

On physical activity, neuroplasticity, depression, screen time, neuromodulation and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time eight sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try resources plus a few fun brain teasers.

#1. Study finds ulti­mate hack to pro­tect teen brains from harm­ful screen time: Exer­cise (and good role-mod­el­ing):

“Girls who spent less than an hour on screens and boys who spent less than 90 min­utes on screens were not neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by it. But at high­er amounts of screen time, their life sat­is­fac­tion dropped significantly—they were less hap­py with their lives, and it got worse the more time they spent … (the) study also found that teens who got more reg­u­lar exer­cise had greater life sat­is­fac­tion and few­er phys­i­cal com­plaints for both gen­ders. Not only that, the effects were large­ly unre­lat­ed to how much time a teen spent on screens, so that if teens exer­cised more, it could poten­tial­ly undo the dam­age to their well-being that went along with even six or eight hours of screen time.”

#2. Stud­ies find grow­ing evi­dence link­ing weight, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and depres­sion:

‘Obe­si­ty and depres­sion are both major glob­al health chal­lenges, and our study pro­vides the most robust evi­dence to date that high­er BMI caus­es depres­sion,’ said lead author Jess O’Loughlin. ‘Under­stand­ing whether phys­i­cal or social fac­tors are respon­si­ble for this rela­tion­ship can help inform effec­tive strate­gies to improve men­tal health and wellbeing.’

#3. Dr. Judith Beck on the future of cog­ni­tive ther­a­py and psy­chother­a­py:

Let’s hope! — “I think Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (CBT) will con­tin­ue to be adapt­ed for more prob­lems, diag­noses, and con­di­tions. We will train many kinds of care­givers, teach­ers, front-line work­ers, police, and even politicians.”

#4. Ratio­nal­i­ty doesn’t equal effi­cien­cy: Cell­phone data shows how we nav­i­gate cities:

“We dis­cov­ered that the most pre­dic­tive mod­el – rep­re­sent­ing the most com­mon mode of city nav­i­ga­tion – was not the quick­est path, but instead one that tried to min­i­mize the angle between the direc­tion a per­son is mov­ing and the line from the per­son to their des­ti­na­tion … Evo­lu­tion is a sto­ry of trade-offs, not opti­miza­tions, and the cog­ni­tive load of cal­cu­lat­ing a per­fect path rather than rely­ing on the sim­pler point­ing method might not be worth a few saved min­utes. After all, ear­ly humans had to pre­serve brain pow­er for dodg­ing stam­ped­ing ele­phants, just like peo­ple today might need to focus on avoid­ing aggres­sive SUVs.”

#5. Trend: Har­ness­ing dig­i­tal tech to improve men­tal health and well­ness:

“Designed with the help of Dutch aca­d­e­m­ic Isabela Granic … the game is cen­tred around an avatar who stays in bed for the day and aims to relax play­ers by using sooth­ing music, mut­ed colours and self-care prac­tices. Think med­i­ta­tive tasks such as word games and guid­ed breath­ing exer­cis­es. There’s no way to win, com­pete or binge – in fact, it delib­er­ate­ly starts to feel bor­ing after a few min­utes of play, which dis­in­cen­tivizes mind­less scrolling. #Self­Care was an instant hit, gar­ner­ing half a mil­lion down­loads in its first six weeks with­out any advertising…”

#6. Study: Per­son­al­ized, closed-loop neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion can (one day) become a “pace­mak­er for the brain”:

“What made this proof-of-prin­ci­ple tri­al suc­cess­ful was the dis­cov­ery of a neur­al bio­mark­er – a spe­cif­ic pat­tern of brain activ­i­ty that indi­cates the onset of symp­toms – and the team’s abil­i­ty to cus­tomize a new DBS device to respond only when it rec­og­nizes that pat­tern. The device then stim­u­lates a dif­fer­ent area of the brain cir­cuit, cre­at­ing on-demand, imme­di­ate ther­a­py that is unique to both the patient’s brain and the neur­al cir­cuit caus­ing her illness.”

#7. Six guide­lines to nav­i­gate the Aduhelm con­tro­ver­sy and (hope­ful­ly) help patients with Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment and ear­ly-stage Alzheimer’s Dis­ease:

“After ini­tial­ly indi­cat­ing that Aduhelm could be pre­scribed to any­one with demen­tia, the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion now spec­i­fies that the pre­scrip­tion drug be giv­en to indi­vid­u­als with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment or ear­ly-stage Alzheimer’s, the groups in which the med­ica­tion was studied.
Yet this nar­row­er rec­om­men­da­tion rais­es ques­tions. What does a diag­no­sis of mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment mean? Is Aduhelm appro­pri­ate for all peo­ple with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, or only some? And who should decide which patients qual­i­fy for treat­ment: demen­tia spe­cial­ists or pri­ma­ry care physicians?”

#8. The Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC) hard­ens data secu­ri­ty rules for health apps and devices:

“With data breach­es on the rise, the FTC is look­ing to make health apps more account­able for telling patients when their data has been exposed.”

 

Wish­ing you and yours a sweet Hal­loween and a healthy month of November,

The Sharp­Brains Team

Dr. Judith Beck on the future of cognitive therapy and psychotherapy

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Dr. Awais Aftab: What do you think the future of psy­chother­a­py is? What would you like it to be?

Dr. Judith Beck: A num­ber of years ago, a col­league asked my dad whether he expect­ed cog­ni­tive ther­a­py to even­tu­al­ly dom­i­nate the field of psy­chother­a­py. He respond­ed, “I hope good ther­a­py even­tu­al­ly dom­i­nates the field of psy­chother­a­py. Just good ther­a­py.” My father has always said, and I agree, that if sig­nif­i­cant research demon­strates greater sup­port for the the­o­ret­i­cal frame­work and treat­ment of a dif­fer­ent psy­chother­a­py, then that psy­chother­a­py should sup­plant CBT. So far that has not hap­pened. To the con­trary, as the years have gone by, there is more and more sup­port for CBT con­cep­tu­al­ly and in treat­ment efficacy.

In terms of the future of CBT, I think we will con­tin­ue to use research from oth­er fields (such as neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy, evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy, and cog­ni­tive sci­ence) to refine the­o­ry and guide ther­a­py. We will con­tin­ue to seek out what treat­ments work best for whom under what con­di­tions. We will have a stronger empha­sis on iden­ti­fy­ing key process­es to tar­get core medi­a­tors and mod­er­a­tors based on testable the­o­ries. [Read more…] about Dr. Judith Beck on the future of cog­ni­tive ther­a­py and psychotherapy