mental health

Study doesn’t find evidence to link internet access with poorer psychological well-being and mental health

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Is the inter­net bad for men­tal health? What the lat­est study real­ly means. (Mash­able):

… Enter a study pub­lished Tues­day by researchers in the jour­nal Clin­i­cal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, which tried but did not suc­ceed in find­ing a com­pelling link between inter­net access and poor men­tal health and well-being.

Busi­ness Insid­er, for exam­ple, declared that the study found no link between social media use and “men­tal health harm.” Except that’s not what the researchers eval­u­at­ed. [Read more…] about Study doesn’t find evi­dence to link inter­net access with poor­er psy­cho­log­i­cal well-being and men­tal health

Next: Harnessing Neuroplasticity, Medication AND Psychotherapy to treat mental health conditions

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There is mount­ing recog­ni­tion in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty that com­bin­ing dif­fer­ent treat­ment approach­es for men­tal health con­di­tions can cre­ate a ben­e­fit greater than the sum of its parts.

As a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist and neu­ro­science researcher, I have been work­ing to inte­grate insights from both fields to expand treat­ment options for those suf­fer­ing from depres­sion, anx­i­ety and relat­ed con­di­tions. Design­ing a treat­ment plan that pays care­ful atten­tion to the sequence and dose of both bio­log­i­cal and behav­ioral ther­a­pies might ben­e­fit peo­ple in new ways that nei­ther approach can achieve on its own. [Read more…] about Next: Har­ness­ing Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, Med­ica­tion AND Psy­chother­a­py to treat men­tal health conditions

Evidence review: Physical exercise helps boost attention, cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control in children and adolescents with ADHD

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The impact of phys­i­cal exer­cise on ADHD has been exam­ined in a large num­ber of stud­ies. Col­lec­tive­ly, these stud­ies have exam­ined whether exer­cise reduces on core ADHD symp­toms, e.g., inat­ten­tion and hyperactivity/impulsivity, and strength­ens exec­u­tive func­tions, e.g., inhibito­ry con­trol, work­ing mem­o­ry, and men­tal health, e.g., emo­tion­al and social func­tion­ing. Over­all, results across mul­ti­ple stud­ies sug­gest a pos­i­tive impact of phys­i­cal activ­i­ty (PA) on sev­er­al of these out­comes in youth with ADHD.

Con­clu­sions based on a sin­gle study –no mat­ter how strong the study design and exe­cu­tion may be– are nec­es­sar­i­ly lim­it­ed, how­ev­er. This has led researchers to com­bine results from mul­ti­ple stud­ies using a sta­tis­ti­cal tech­nique called meta-analy­sis so that more robust and reli­able esti­mates of a treat­men­t’s impact can be deter­mined. [Read more…] about Evi­dence review: Phys­i­cal exer­cise helps boost atten­tion, cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty and inhibito­ry con­trol in chil­dren and ado­les­cents with ADHD

Major evidence review supports an “exercise prescription” for most adults to boost mental health and well-being

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When you head to your week­ly yoga class or lift weights at the gym, you’re doing some­thing good for your phys­i­cal health: get­ting more fit today, and so pro­tect­ing your body into the future.

What you may not always think about, though, is that you’re also pro­tect­ing your­self from anx­i­ety and depression—about as much as you would be if you were going to ther­a­py or tak­ing med­ica­tion. At least that’s the con­clu­sion of a very large new study that syn­the­sizes decades of research on exer­cise and men­tal health.

The study doesn’t just pro­vide this key insight—in fact, the researchers were also able to iden­ti­fy what kind of exer­cise and how much of it is best for men­tal health. [Read more…] about Major evi­dence review sup­ports an “exer­cise pre­scrip­tion” for most adults to boost men­tal health and well-being

BrainHealth Week starts today! Plus: dancing, personalized mental health, brain stimulation and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, annouc­ing the kick-off of Brain­Health Week and fea­tur­ing some stim­u­lat­ing resources and teasers.

#1. Brain­Health Week (Feb­ru­ary 20–24th) starts today:

Explore many fun events includ­ing a dai­ly text chal­lenge, a talk with the always great Dr. Tom Insel, and more!

#2. With­out Brain Health, you do not have Health

Impor­tant arti­cle giv­en that “It typ­i­cal­ly takes twen­ty to forty years or more for sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies to mean­ing­ful­ly ben­e­fit human life. We can­not wait that long.” — Wise words!

#3. Sin Salud Cere­bral, Ust­ed no tiene Salud –same arti­cle, in Span­ish, for extra men­tal stim­u­la­tion and for sharing 🙂

“En los últi­mos diez años, los neu­ro­ci­en­tifi­cos hemos des­cu­bier­to mucho acer­ca de cómo fun­ciona el cere­bro, cómo mejo­rar la salud y el fun­cionamien­to del cere­bro y la mente a lo largo de la vida, y cómo esto con­tribuye a nues­tra salud y bien­es­tar en gen­er­al. Únase a nosotros y asegúrese de que los mejores años de su cere­bro están aún por venir, recor­dan­do que: Sin salud cere­bral, ust­ed no tiene salud.”

#4. Ball­room danc­ing can reduce aging-relat­ed brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus (and, more than tread­mill walking!)

“(Danc­ing) gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater improve­ments than tread­mill walk­ing on one mea­sure of exec­u­tive func­tion and on pro­cess­ing speed, which is the time it takes to respond to or process infor­ma­tion. Com­pared with walk­ing, danc­ing was also asso­ci­at­ed with reduced brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus – a brain region that is key to mem­o­ry func­tion­ing and is par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ed by Alzheimer’s dis­ease … We think that social danc­ing may be more ben­e­fi­cial than walk­ing because it is phys­i­cal­ly, social­ly and cog­ni­tive­ly demand­ing – and there­fore strength­ens a wide net­work of brain regions.”

#5. Alto Neu­ro­science rais­es $60M (equi­ty + cred­it) to help fix the “tri­al and error” approach to psy­chi­atric medication

“To do so, Alto is pair­ing a trove of data on EEG activ­i­ty, genet­ics, behav­ioral task mea­sure­ments and oth­er fac­tors to see which of its drugs fits best with patients who have depres­sion, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and oth­er men­tal health con­di­tions. The company’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence plat­form homes in on three buck­ets: cog­ni­tion, emo­tion and sleep.”

#6. Voice bio­mark­er plat­form Sonde Health rais­es $19.25M to spread access to men­tal health mon­i­tor­ing and beyond

“GN Group will inte­grate Sonde’s Men­tal Fit­ness vocal bio­mark­er into its hear­ing prod­ucts. The com­pa­ny is already work­ing with Sonde to devel­op an MCI vocal bio­mark­er. Qual­comm, which has already inte­grat­ed Sonde’s vocal bio­mark­ers into its mobile device chipsets, has extend­ed the rela­tion­ship to include its wear­able chipsets.”

#7. The Euro­pean Soci­ety for Brain Stim­u­la­tion oppos­es EU reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of TMS and tDCS, claim­ing a flawed safe­ty assessment

“To put this into per­spec­tive, the like­li­hood of a seizure from rTMS (0.003%) is low­er than that asso­ci­at­ed with the use of anti­de­pres­sants and antipsy­chotics (0.1–1, 5%) … More­over, when such seizures occur they do so most­ly out­side the clinician’s office, by con­trast with rTMS (Per­era et al., 2016). For low inten­si­ty tDCS, tACS, tRNS seizure risk is com­plete­ly absent … As an organ­i­sa­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of NIBS clin­i­cians and pro­fes­sion­als from across Europe, we, the ESBS, there­fore dis­agree with this EU deci­sion and in par­tic­u­lar with the fac­tu­al­ly incor­rect jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of that deci­sion to reclas­si­fy TMS and TES as inva­sive technologies”

Final­ly, a cou­ple of brain teasers to help you test your men­tal rota­tion cog­ni­tive skills:

#8. Can you read a map?

#9. Brain teas­er to stim­u­late your men­tal imagery, spa­tial rota­tion … and appetite

Have a great Brain­Health Week!

Headspace Health’s Leslie Witt on the future of mental health: Meditation, text-based coaching, teletherapy, telepsychiatry, and community

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Q&A: How Head­space Health’s acqui­si­tions alter its men­tal health prod­uct (Mobi­Health­News):

Head­space Health has revealed two acqui­si­tions this year, the lat­est com­ing ear­li­er this month when the dig­i­tal men­tal health com­pa­ny announced the pur­chase of men­tal well­ness app Shine. [Read more…] about Head­space Health’s Leslie Witt on the future of men­tal health: Med­i­ta­tion, text-based coach­ing, telether­a­py, telepsy­chi­a­try, and community

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