mental-health-treatment

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

by

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

Dos and Don’ts of Therapy on the Go: Navigating the use of apps for mental health care

by

It might be sur­pris­ing to think about brows­ing for ther­a­pists and order­ing up men­tal health care the way you can peruse a menu on Grub­hub or sum­mon a car on Lyft.

But over the last decade, dig­i­tal access to ther­a­py has become increas­ing­ly com­mon, in some cas­es replac­ing the tra­di­tion­al mod­el of in-per­son week­ly ses­sions between a ther­a­pist and client.

Apps for men­tal health and well­ness range from mood track­ers, med­i­ta­tion tools and jour­nals to ther­a­py apps that match users to a licensed pro­fes­sion­al. My team’s research focus­es on ther­a­py apps that work by match­ing clients to a licensed pro­fes­sion­al. [Read more…] about Dos and Don’ts of Ther­a­py on the Go: Nav­i­gat­ing the use of apps for men­tal health care

Study on the “ABCs of Mental Health” finds that simply believing you can improve mental wellbeing helps actually improve it

by

The num­ber of peo­ple strug­gling with poor men­tal health and men­tal dis­or­ders has been ris­ing around the world over the past few decades. Those who are strug­gling are increas­ing­ly fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties access­ing the kind of sup­port they need – leav­ing many wait­ing months for help, if they even qual­i­fy for treatment.

While it’s clear that more needs to be done to improve access to treat­ment, it doesn’t mean peo­ple inevitably have to strug­gle with their men­tal health as a result. In fact, there are many things peo­ple can do on their own to main­tain good men­tal health – and even pre­vent men­tal health prob­lems from devel­op­ing in the first place. Accord­ing to our recent research, one of the steps you can take to improve your men­tal well­be­ing may be as sim­ple as believ­ing that you can.

In our recent study, we asked 3,015 Dan­ish adults to fill out a sur­vey that asked ques­tions about men­tal health – such as whether they believe they can do some­thing to keep men­tal­ly healthy, whether they had done some­thing in the past two weeks to sup­port their men­tal health, and also whether they were cur­rent­ly strug­gling with a men­tal health prob­lem. We then assessed their lev­el of men­tal well­be­ing using the Short Warwick–Edinburgh Men­tal Well-being Scale, which is wide­ly used by health­care pro­fes­sion­als and researchers to mea­sure men­tal well­be­ing. [Read more…] about Study on the “ABCs of Men­tal Health” finds that sim­ply believ­ing you can improve men­tal well­be­ing helps actu­al­ly improve it

The explosion of mental health apps raises substantial opportunities–and also difficult questions

by

In the eyes of the tech indus­try, men­tal health treat­ment is an area ripe for disruption.

In any giv­en year, 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. expe­ri­ence a form of men­tal ill­ness, accord­ing to fed­er­al esti­mates. And research indi­cates only about half of them receive treat­ment in a sys­tem that is under­staffed and ill dis­trib­uted to meet demand.

For tech star­tups look­ing to cash in on unmet need, that trans­lates into more than 50 mil­lion poten­tial cus­tomers. [Read more…] about The explo­sion of men­tal health apps rais­es sub­stan­tial opportunities–and also dif­fi­cult questions

Mental Health News: NYT, Mind Hacks

by

Brain Health NewsA few very inter­est­ing New York Times arti­cles over the last cou­ple of days, plus a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for clin­i­cians and researchers in Latin America.

- Well: When a Brain Sci­en­tist Suf­fers a Stroke

“Dr. Tay­lor recounts the details of her stroke and the amaz­ing insights she gained from it in a riv­et­ing 18-minute video of her speech at the Tech­nol­o­gy, Enter­tain­ment, Design Con­fer­ence in Mon­terey, Calif., last month.”

[Read more…] about Men­tal Health News: NYT, Mind Hacks