Trend: Despite concerns, large US employers deploy apps, AI chatbots, other digital tools to boost workplace mental health

Employ­ers Are Offer­ing a New Work­er Ben­e­fit: Well­ness Chat­bots (The Wall Street Jour­nal): More work­ers feel­ing anx­ious, stressed or blue have a new place to go for men­­tal-health help: a dig­i­tal app. Chat­bots that hold ther­a­pist-like con­ver­sa­tions and well­ness apps that deliv­er depres­sion and oth­er diag­noses or iden­ti­fy peo­ple at risk of self-harm are snow­balling across…

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Debate: Will digital therapeutics gain the required levels of awareness, adoption, reimbursement and fulfillment to become sustainable?

Can dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics become prof­itable? (MedTech­Dive): In 2020, the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion cleared Akili Inter­ac­tive’s video game to improve atten­tion in kids with ADHD. It was the first time that a video game for treat­ment was cleared by the agency, and is one exam­ple of a dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic, a class of soft­­ware-based treat­ments with…

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Trend: Harnessing digital tech to improve mental health and wellness

From mind­ful­ness apps to vir­tu­al ther­a­py ses­sions, dig­i­tal tools offer instant access to well­ness resources (The Globe and Mail): In 2015, Brie Code was work­ing at lead­ing video game com­pa­ny Ubisoft as lead arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pro­gram­mer when she real­ized that many peo­ple she knew – about half, by her esti­ma­tion – found video games boring.

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On cognitive reframing and biases, stress, mental health tech, Aduhelm backlash, Britney Spears, and more

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time nine sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try devel­op­ments to help pro­mote life­long brain and men­tal health. #1. To low­er stress lev­els and improve prob­lem-solv­ing, prac­tice cog­ni­tive refram­ing instead of vent­ing “… vent­ing like­ly doesn’t soothe anger as much as aug­ment it. That’s because encour­ag­ing peo­ple to…

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Blue Note Therapeutics raises $26M to help treat cancer-related distress via cognitive behavioral stress management (CBSM)

Blue Note Ther­a­peu­tics Rais­es $26.25 Mil­lion in Series A Financ­ing (press release): Blue Note Ther­a­peu­tics, Inc., today announced the clos­ing of a Series A financ­ing round of $26.25 mil­lion. Pro­ceeds will allow the com­pa­ny to scale the orga­ni­za­tion and fund near-term clin­i­cal tri­als of its lead pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic (PDT), which will poten­tial­ly improve the…

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