Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

cognitive-behavioral-therapy

Helping young brains fight off anxiety by training and raising cognitive control

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Anx­i­ety is one of the most com­mon child­hood men­tal dis­or­ders. About 7% of chil­dren suf­fer from it at any giv­en time, with near­ly 1 in 3 ado­les­cents expe­ri­enc­ing it some­time dur­ing their teen years.

For an anx­ious child, seem­ing­ly nor­mal activ­i­ties can be hard. Wor­ried kids have trou­ble adjust­ing to school, mak­ing friends, and learn­ing. They can feel inhib­it­ed, avoid­ing chal­lenges by run­ning away or retreat­ing into them­selves. While par­ents may feel des­per­ate to help, their approach­es can back­fire. For exam­ple, try­ing to talk kids out of their feel­ings or keep them away from anx­i­ety-pro­duc­ing sit­u­a­tions may inad­ver­tent­ly make the anx­i­ety worse. [Read more…] about Help­ing young brains fight off anx­i­ety by train­ing and rais­ing cog­ni­tive control

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled chatbot Wysa raises $5.5M to broaden access to mental health support

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Wysa’s AI-Guid­ed Men­tal Health Plat­form Clos­es $5.5M Series A to Bridge the Gap in Employ­ee Men­tal Health (press release):

“Wysa, the lead­ing glob­al AI-pow­ered men­tal health plat­form, today, dur­ing Men­tal Health Aware­ness Month, announced a $5.5M Series A financ­ing round led by W Health Ven­tures, a Boston-based dig­i­tal health investor. Oth­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the round include the Google Assis­tant Invest­ment pro­gram, and exist­ing investors pi Ven­tures and Kae Cap­i­tal. Wysa will use this cap­i­tal to sup­port its offer­ing to employ­ers who want to expand their men­tal health ben­e­fits, as well as scale up Wysa’s sales team and ther­a­pist net­work. [Read more…] about Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI)-enabled chat­bot Wysa rais­es $5.5M to broad­en access to men­tal health support

Teladoc Health, having acquired Livongo and myStrength, launches integrated mental health service for the workplace

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Teladoc builds out men­tal health­care ser­vices with myS­trength Com­plete (Mobi­Health­News):

Vir­tu­al care giant Teladoc is build­ing out its behav­ioral health ser­vices through its lat­est pro­gram, myS­trength Complete.

The new offer­ing is designed to give users a sin­gle inte­grat­ed men­tal health­care expe­ri­ence. It com­bines the app-based mod­els of care from myS­trength with Teladoc’s on-demand ther­a­pists and psy­chi­a­trists … The myS­trength plat­form uses evi­dence-based clin­i­cal mod­els such as cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py, pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy and mind­ful­ness to help treat behav­ioral health con­di­tions such as depres­sion, anx­i­ety, insom­nia and sub­stance use dis­or­der. [Read more…] about Teladoc Health, hav­ing acquired Livon­go and myS­trength, launch­es inte­grat­ed men­tal health ser­vice for the workplace

Ohio joins Indiana and Kentucky in funding Pear Therapeutics’ digital addiction treatments

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Ohio is third state to fund Pear’s dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics to tack­le addic­tion (phar­mafo­rum):

The com­pa­ny has been push­ing for more reim­burse­ment of its three mar­ket­ed DTx prod­ucts in the US fol­low­ing a first FDA approval in 2017.

Pear said that the Ohio Depart­ment of Men­tal Health and Addic­tion Ser­vices (OhioMHAS) and Recov­ery­Ohio are pro­vid­ing access to Pear’s FDA-approved DTx reSET and reSET‑O, for treat­ment of sub­stance use dis­or­der and opi­oid use dis­or­ders, respec­tive­ly. [Read more…] about Ohio joins Indi­ana and Ken­tucky in fund­ing Pear Ther­a­peu­tics’ dig­i­tal addic­tion treatments

Debate: How and when will the telemedicine surge reach mental healthcare?

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Covid-19 Pan­dem­ic Dri­ves Patients—and Deal Makers—to Telemed­i­cine (The Wall Street Journal):

The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has put the once-niche cat­e­go­ry of telemed­i­cine in the spot­light and is now dri­ving a flur­ry of deal activ­i­ty involv­ing vir­tu­al health-care providers … Patients have embraced vir­tu­al care as a way to stay in touch with doc­tors for urgent care or chron­ic care man­age­ment with­out risk­ing expo­sure to the coro­n­avirus by vis­it­ing med­ical offices. Telemed­i­cine vis­its are typ­i­cal­ly con­duct­ed between a doc­tor and patient using video­con­fer­enc­ing or a phone call and are used to address minor ail­ments like colds as well as man­age­ment of chron­ic con­di­tions like dia­betes. [Read more…] about Debate: How and when will the telemed­i­cine surge reach men­tal healthcare?

Startup Big Health raises $39M to universalize access to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety and poor sleep

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Big Health Hones Dig­i­tal Men­tal Health Ther­a­py With $39M Series B (Crunch­base):

“Start­up Big Health believes indi­vid­u­als can improve their men­tal health through its tech­nol­o­gy that focus­es on cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py ver­sus med­ica­tion or the help of human therapists.

On Thurs­day it raised $39 mil­lion in a Series B financ­ing to advance that objective.

[Read more…] about Start­up Big Health rais­es $39M to uni­ver­sal­ize access to cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) for anx­i­ety and poor sleep