CVS Health: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) apps may help you more than sleeping pills

__________ Sleep Ther­a­py for the Mass­es May Be Com­ing to You Soon (The New York Times): “CVS Health wants to help mil­lions of Amer­i­can work­ers improve their sleep. So for the first time, the big phar­ma­cy ben­e­fits man­ag­er is offer­ing a pure­ly dig­i­tal ther­a­py as a pos­si­ble employ­ee ben­e­fit. The com­pa­ny is encour­ag­ing employ­ers to cover…

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Can digital Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBTi) become the universal first-line treatment for insomnia?

__________ Pear Ther­a­peu­tics’ dig­i­tal insom­nia ther­a­peu­tic will put FDA’s Pre­Cert frame­work through its paces (Mobi­Health­News): “Pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics com­pa­ny Pear Ther­a­peu­tics announced late last week that it has filed an FDA mar­ket­ing autho­riza­tion for Som­ryst, its dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py for the treat­ment of adults with chron­ic insom­nia and depres­sion. While an approval from the…

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Best predictor of sustained weight-loss? Prefrontal cortex activation

_____ New research sug­gests that high­­er-lev­­el brain func­tions have a major role in los­ing weight. In a study among 24 par­tic­i­pants at a weight-loss clin­ic, those who achieved great­est suc­cess in terms of weight loss demon­strat­ed more activ­i­ty in the brain regions of the lat­er­al pre­frontal cor­tex asso­ci­at­ed with self-control.

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Growing research aims at helping cancer patients in distress access most-likely-to-help self-care options, from Mindfulness training to Web-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

___ Mind­ful­ness in can­cer treat­ment: time to stop and think (The Con­ver­sa­tion): “Breathe deeply and focus on the moment: mind­ful­ness now appears every­where as a tech­nique to improve well-being, includ­ing in health care. Mind­ful­ness train­ing is often sug­gest­ed for can­cer patients to reduce high lev­els of anx­i­ety and dis­tress asso­ci­at­ed with diag­no­sis, treat­ment and anticipation…

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FDA clears first CBT-based digital therapeutic to treat substance abuse disorders

__________ The FDA just approved the first app for treat­ing sub­stance abuse (CNBC): “The app, devel­oped by a start-up called Pear Ther­a­peu­tics, is designed to be pre­scribed by clin­i­cian and used along­side coun­sel­ing. Pear’s tech­nol­o­gy dig­i­tizes a form of talk ther­a­py called cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py, or CBT, which focus­es on “exam­in­ing the rela­tion­ships between thoughts,…

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