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mental healthcare

How much should you trust BetterHelp, Talkspace, Cerebral and other mental health start-ups touted by celebrities?

July 11, 2022 by Kaiser Health News

When Pat Paulson’s son told her he was feel­ing anx­ious and depressed at col­lege, Paul­son went through her Blue Cross Blue Shield provider direc­to­ry and start­ed call­ing men­tal health ther­a­pists. No providers in the Wis­con­sin city where her son’s uni­ver­si­ty is locat­ed had open­ings. So she bought a month­ly sub­scrip­tion to Bet­ter­Help, a Moun­tain View, Cal­i­for­nia, com­pa­ny that links peo­ple to ther­a­pists online.

Her son felt uncom­fort­able with his first Bet­ter­Help ther­a­pist. After wait­ing sev­er­al weeks, he saw a sec­ond ther­a­pist, whom he liked. But she wasn’t avail­able the fol­low­ing week. [Read more…] about How much should you trust Bet­ter­Help, Talk­space, Cere­bral and oth­er men­tal health start-ups tout­ed by celebrities?

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: 8 billion minds, American-Psychological-Association, BetterHelp, cerebral, medication, mental health, mental health start-ups, mental healthcare, start-ups, talk-therapy, Talkspace, teletherapy

From “Eminence-based” to Evidence-based cognitive & mental healthcare: Time for quality and accountability

March 31, 2022 by SharpBrains

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news, two excel­lent new books and a few fun brain teasers.

#1. From “Emi­nence-based” to Evi­dence-based men­tal health­care: Time to focus on qual­i­ty and accountability

“The real chal­lenge is not find­ing a ther­a­pist, it’s find­ing a ther­a­pist who knows how to pro­vide the treat­ments that work. In the ear­ly 2000s, Myr­na Weiss­man was try­ing to under­stand why so few ther­a­pists use sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly based treat­ments. She found that over 60 per­cent of pro­fes­sion­al schools of psy­chol­o­gy and master’s lev­el social work pro­grams did not include any super­vised train­ing for any sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly based ther­a­py … In con­trast to evi­dence-based care, I call this “emi­nence-based care.” — Dr. Thomas Insel in his excel­lent new book

#2. Anoth­er great new book to cel­e­brate Brain Aware­ness Week 2022

“Spain played a unique role in Cajal’s discoveries—that is, in the pro­gres­sion of neu­ro­science. The coun­try was not a hotbed of sci­en­tif­ic research. Lack­ing men­tors, Cajal near­ly aban­doned his efforts. But work­ing inde­pen­dent­ly may have forged his auton­o­my and freed him from the influ­ence of tra­di­tion­al the­o­ries. He also longed to dis­prove the stereo­types about Spain. “One could admit that Spain pro­duces some genius artist, such as a long-haired poet or ges­tic­u­lat­ing dancer of either sex,” Cajal lat­er wrote, “but the idea that a true man of sci­ence would emerge from there was con­sid­ered absurd.” — Fas­ci­nat­ing insights into the “father of mod­ern neuroscience”

#3. UT-Dal­las Brain­Health presents vir­tu­al talks with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and San­jay Gup­ta next month (April 21th and 26th; both 8:00 – 9:00 PM EDT/ Mia­mi time)

We believe some of you may be interested 🙂

#4. Cana­di­an study finds causal link between time play­ing videogames at age 12 and ADHD symp­toms at age 13

“After con­trol­ling for sex, socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus, and ADHD symp­toms at age 12, the week­ly amount video game play report­ed at age 12 pre­dict­ed high­er lev­els of self-report­ed ADHD symp­toms at age 13 … The mag­ni­tude of the effect was not large, but it was sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. In con­trast, high­er lev­els of ADHD symp­toms at age 12 did not pre­dict an increase in video game play one year later.”

#5. From for­est bathing to urban parks: How nature helps pro­tect our well-being dur­ing a pandemic

“Whether we gar­den, have a view of nature out our win­dow, vis­it near­by parks, or even just watch a nature video, we can help our­selves deal with the stress­es and strains of COVID iso­la­tion by giv­ing our­selves and our kids a dose of “Vit­a­min N.”

#6. A con­ver­sa­tion at the fron­tier of dig­i­tal health inno­va­tion, FDA reg­u­la­tions, and cog­ni­tive health

Good to see rec­og­nized the need for “reim­burse­ment inno­va­tion” for emerg­ing dig­i­tal bio­mark­ers & ther­a­peu­tics — the FDA does have both sticks and car­rots to leverage

#7. New DARPA ini­tia­tive aims to har­ness cog­ni­tive sci­ence, sen­sors and machine learn­ing to detect ear­ly brain signs of depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and sui­ci­dal ideation

“NEAT is a proof-of-con­cept effort attempt­ing to devel­op a new tool for men­tal and behav­ioral health screen­ing that moves us beyond his­tor­i­cal and cur­rent meth­ods of ques­tions and con­scious­ly fil­tered respons­es … If suc­cess­ful, NEAT will not only sig­nif­i­cant­ly aug­ment behav­ioral health screen­ing, but it could also serve as a new way to assess ulti­mate treat­ment effi­ca­cy, since patients will often tell their clin­i­cians what they think the clin­i­cian wants to hear rather than how they are tru­ly feel­ing.” — Greg Witkop, pro­gram man­ag­er in DARPA’s Defense Sci­ences Office

#8. Sep­a­rat­ing brain-healthy wheat from chaff is becom­ing more urgent by the day

Would you trust claims in A or B or neither?

Final­ly, here’s a selec­tion of fun brain teasers that read­ers have enjoyed the most this year so far:

#9. Where’s the baby?

#10. Can you con­nect these pairs of words?

#11. Want to test your stress level?

#12. Which way is the bus head­ing?

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing April … and let’s get some Vit­a­min N (and D) this weekend!

The Sharp­Brains Team

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: adhd, ADHD-symptoms, alvaro-fernandez, behavioral health screening, Brain Teasers, BrainHealth, Cajal, cognitive-abilities, DARPA, digital biomarkers, digital therapeutics, FDA, fun brain teasers, mental health screening, mental healthcare, NEAT, neuroscience, playing videogames, Sanjay Gupta, Spain, stimulating brain teasers, therapist, UT-Dallas

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

May 24, 2021 by SharpBrains

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

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: AI, cognitive restructuring, cognitive-behavioral-therapy, digital therapeutics, mental health benefits, mental health platform, mental healthcare, mindfulness, W Health Ventures, Wysa

On Brain Awareness Week, mental health innovation, tDCS, biofeedback, psychedelics, and more

February 26, 2021 by SharpBrains

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, start­ing with some ideas to get in the mood for Brain Aware­ness Week next month (March 15–21st). May BAW 2021 be a hun­dred times more upbeat than last year’s…

#1. Sev­en brain teasers and a neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty pod­cast to cel­e­brate Brain Aware­ness Week 2021

#2. Imag­ine what this capa­bil­i­ty may mean just a few years from now. Should/ will Google alert Gmail users about their (future) cog­ni­tive sta­tus? Study: Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pro­gram iden­ti­fies lin­guis­tic mark­ers that pre­dict, with 70% accu­ra­cy, who gets Alzheimer’s Dis­ease years later

#3. Sim­i­lar to what hap­pened to Thync back in 2016, Halo Neu­ro­science strug­gled to com­mer­cial­ize tDCS as a non-med­ical device and the tech­nol­o­gy is being repur­posed for clin­i­cal use. Neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion devel­op­er Halo Neu­ro­science clos­es its doors; Flow Neu­ro­science acquires assets

#4. Here you have a cou­ple recent meta-analy­ses sug­gest­ing a grow­ing adop­tion in the near future of web-based, and increas­ing­ly per­son­al­ized, inter­ven­tions. Grow­ing research points to expand­ing adop­tion of online cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­pies, both guid­ed and unguided

#5. “If there is any­thing we’ve seen out of this year, it’s real­ly become that fourth pil­lar of ben­e­fits for every employ­er out there. Every­one has med­ical, den­tal and vision. Men­tal health has now real­ly become that fourth pil­lar of ben­e­fits for all employ­ers.” — Alyson Wat­son, CEO and founder of Mod­ern Health. Four trends accel­er­at­ing men­tal health inno­va­tion in the COVID/ post-COVID era

#6. “Access to men­tal health­care is a human right that shouldn’t be buried by stig­ma, lack of access, or afford­abil­i­ty.” — Oliv­er Har­ri­son, CEO of Koa Health. Dig­i­tal men­tal health start-up Koa Health rais­es €30M to accel­er­ate growth in Europe and the US

#7. “Just as the viral pan­dem­ic has accel­er­at­ed vac­cine devel­op­ment, this glob­al cri­sis has brought togeth­er men­tal health experts from the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor around the world to address what is sure­ly a sec­ond pan­dem­ic trig­gered by loss, anx­i­ety, and social iso­la­tion” — Thomas Insel, MD, co-founder of Human­est Care. Sur­vey finds con­cerns AND hope to address grow­ing men­tal health needs due to the covid pandemic

#8. Can biofeed­back-based videogames help chil­dren bet­ter man­age stress? Mag­el­lan Health and Might­i­er secure $2 mil­lion NIMH grant to investigate

#9. “The Organ­i­sa­tion for the Review of Care and Health Apps (ORCHA) has reviewed almost 600 men­tal health apps … only 29.6% meet qual­i­ty thresh­olds” The land­scape of dig­i­tal men­tal health apps: huge unmet needs, qual­i­ty con­cerns, app stores asked to ensure transparency

#10. Final­ly, an idea out there worth explor­ing … Next: Psy­che­del­ic-assist­ed psychotherapy?

Have a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing month of March,

The Sharp­Brains Team

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: behavioral, biofeedback, Brain Teasers, cognitive, Halo Neuroscience, Humanest Care, Koa Health, mental healthcare, Mightier, Modern Health, neuroplasticity, psychedelics, Psychotherapy, tDCS, therapies, Thync

Digital mental health start-up Koa Health raises €30M to accelerate growth in Europe and the US

February 16, 2021 by SharpBrains

Men­tal health­care start­up Koa Health clos­es €30M Series A fund­ing to expand its inter­na­tion­al foot­print (Sil­i­con Canals):

In a recent devel­op­ment, Barcelona-based dig­i­tal men­tal health­care provider, Koa Health, has announced it closed an over­sub­scribed €30M Series A fund­ing round … The com­pa­ny had raised the funds back in Octo­ber 2020 and had also announced its spin-out from Alpha, Telefónica’s start­up fac­to­ry. [Read more…] about Dig­i­tal men­tal health start-up Koa Health rais­es €30M to accel­er­ate growth in Europe and the US

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Alpha, digital mental health, Koa Health, mental healthcare, Oliver Harrison, startup, Telefónica

Survey finds concerns AND hope to address growing mental health needs due to the covid pandemic

February 11, 2021 by SharpBrains

Dig­i­tal providers come to the fore to sup­port glob­al men­tal health dur­ing pan­dem­ic (press release):

Research pub­lished today shows how dig­i­tal providers are com­ing togeth­er to sup­port the men­tal health needs of mil­lions of users unable to access tra­di­tion­al ser­vices dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. [Read more…] about Sur­vey finds con­cerns AND hope to address grow­ing men­tal health needs due to the covid pandemic

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: anxiety, COVID-19, digital health, digital mental health, Humanest Care, loneliness, mental health, mental health apps, Mental Health Tsunami, mental healthcare, ORCHA

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