cognitive-behavioral-therapy

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

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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 approved “anti-Alzheimer’s” drugs: “To put it blunt­ly, if lecanemab doesn’t work in women it would be uneth­i­cal to sup­ply it to women. Recall this cost­ly immunother­a­py comes with sub­stan­tive risks, includ­ing high inci­dence of ARIA and even death.”

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

  • There’s even a peti­tion cir­cu­lat­ing among sci­en­tists and doc­tors stat­ing that “As the FDA pre­pares to deter­mine if it will grant full approval for its wide­spread use, the avail­able data sug­gests lecanemab is inef­fec­tive and may be harm­ful, mak­ing its use and cost unjustifiable.”

#3. How the Arts trans­form our Brains, Bod­ies, and Minds

  • “The arts can trans­form you like noth­ing else.”

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

  • Capa­bil­i­ties > Knowledge

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

  • “Not only could EEG ML pre­dict treat­ment, but mod­els trained on one ther­a­py could pre­dict the oth­er. Not only could EEG ML pre­dict respon­ders, but it could also iden­ti­fy non-responders.…people for whom nei­ther ther­a­py works.”

#6. The Nation­al Health Ser­vice (NHS) in Eng­land to roll-out nine online cog­ni­tive-behav­iour­al ther­a­pies (CBT) for adults with anx­i­ety or depression

  • “They pro­vide an alter­na­tive way of access­ing sup­port, which may be more con­ve­nient for some, the Nation­al Insti­tute for Health and Care Excel­lence (NICE) says … NICE will look at the evi­dence from their use over the next few years to work out how cost-effec­tive they are.”

#7. Study: Self-guid­ed inter­net-deliv­ered treat­ment can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce ADHD symp­toms among adults

  • “Adults in the inter­ven­tion group report­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater reduc­tions in ADHD symp­toms fol­low­ing treat­ment than con­trol par­tic­i­pants; these dif­fer­ences were main­tained at the 3?month fol­low-up … Fur­ther, no adults in the inter­ven­tion group showed a mean­ing­ful increase in symp­toms from base­line to fol­low-up while this hap­pened for over 19% of adults in the con­trol group.”

Last but not least, a few brain teasers and sci­ence tips for adults of any age:

 

Have a great summer!

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

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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 with sleep edu­ca­tion using the same app … “To our knowl­edge, this is the first RCT [ran­dom­ized clin­i­cal tri­al] in which the con­trol group received sleep edu­ca­tion pro­vid­ed using the same inter­face as an inter­ven­tion,” said the researchers. [Read more…] about Smart­phone-based cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py found to sig­nif­i­cant­ly decrease insom­nia, sub­stan­tial­ly out­per­form­ing sleep education

8‑week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course found to be as effective as Lexapro (escitalopram) to treat adults with anxiety disorders, and with far fewer side effects

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Cred­it: Brain­Post, with data from Hoge et al (2022)

Anx­i­ety is the most com­mon psy­chi­atric dis­or­der, with over 301 mil­lion ?peo­ple affect­ed around the world. Whether extreme anx­i­ety aris­es in social sit­u­a­tions, is trig­gered by a par­tic­u­lar pho­bia, or man­i­fests as a gen­er­al unease in the world, it can severe­ly affect people’s every­day func­tion­ing and lead to high lev­els of distress.

Luck­i­ly, there are good treat­ments for anx­i­ety, includ­ing Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (or CBT) and var­i­ous phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drugs. Still, CBT takes a high­ly-trained ther­a­pist to admin­is­ter and can be lengthy and expen­sive, mak­ing it inac­ces­si­ble to many peo­ple who need it. And, while drug ther­a­pies can work well and are often cov­ered by insur­ers, they may not be accept­able for peo­ple who wor­ry about the poten­tial side effects of putting a drug in their body. [Read more…] about 8‑week Mind­ful­ness-Based Stress Reduc­tion (MBSR) course found to be as effec­tive as Lexapro (esc­i­talo­pram) to treat adults with anx­i­ety dis­or­ders, and with far few­er side effects

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

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