mental illness

“Digital therapeutics” vs. “Mental health apps”: A growing debate on standards, regulation and efficacy

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The effi­ca­cy of Men­tal Health Apps (phar­mafo­rum):

In Jan­u­ary, PLOS Dig­i­tal Health pub­lished a study which claimed that there’s “sparse” data to sup­port the effi­ca­cy of most men­tal health apps.

In their meta-analy­sis of pub­lished stud­ies, the authors found uni­ver­sal defi­cien­cies and con­clud­ed that there’s no con­vinc­ing evi­dence that app-based inter­ven­tions deliv­er mean­ing­ful out­comes. With­out dig­ging fur­ther, one might think the cur­rent case for dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics is weak.

I reviewed all 14 meta-analy­ses includ­ed in the study and found the analy­sis to be accu­rate, but incom­plete. [Read more…] about “Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics” vs. “Men­tal health apps”: A grow­ing debate on stan­dards, reg­u­la­tion and efficacy

Collaborative neuroimaging initiative BrainChart helps chart how brains change across the lifespan

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Source: Beth­le­hem et al (2020). A graph­i­cal sum­ma­ry of the nor­ma­tive tra­jec­to­ries of the medi­an (50th cen­tile) for each glob­al MRI phe­no­type, and key devel­op­men­tal mile­stones, as a func­tion of age (log-scaled).

For decades, growth charts have been used by pae­di­a­tri­cians as ref­er­ence tools. The charts allow health pro­fes­sion­als to plot and mea­sure a child’s height and weight from birth to young adult­hood. The per­centile scores they pro­vide, espe­cial­ly across mul­ti­ple vis­its, help doc­tors screen for con­di­tions such as obe­si­ty or inad­e­quate growth, which fall at the extremes of these scores.

Mean­while, it is pos­si­ble to mea­sure brain devel­op­ment with imag­ing tech­nolo­gies such as ultra­sound, mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing (MRI) and com­put­erised tomog­ra­phy (CT). The devel­op­ment of these tech­nolo­gies has led to a wealth of research on how the brain changes, and each year, mil­lions of clin­i­cal brain scans are per­formed world­wide. Despite this progress, there are few mea­sures that are used to aid in mon­i­tor­ing brain devel­op­ment. Why? [Read more…] about Col­lab­o­ra­tive neu­roimag­ing ini­tia­tive Brain­Chart helps chart how brains change across the lifespan

Otsuka and Virtual Reality start-up Jolly Good sign $43M deal to promote Social Skills Training (SST) therapies, helping schizophrenia patients first

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Jol­ly Good and Tei­jin Phar­ma Form a Part­ner­ship to Devel­op VR Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics for Depression

Otsu­ka signs on Jol­ly Good for $43M men­tal health VR deal (Fierce Biotech):

The duo will build out software—hosted on Jol­ly Good’s VR gog­gles and con­nect­ed tablet devices, and backed by Otsuka’s exper­tise in devel­op­ing neu­ro­log­i­cal therapeutics—that takes a social skills train­ing (SST) approach to treat­ing men­tal ill­ness. SST is a behav­ioral ther­a­py in which patients with anx­i­ety, mood and per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­ders, among oth­er con­di­tions, are taught on a step-by-step basis how to nav­i­gate spe­cif­ic social inter­ac­tions. [Read more…] about Otsu­ka and Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty start-up Jol­ly Good sign $43M deal to pro­mote Social Skills Train­ing (SST) ther­a­pies, help­ing schiz­o­phre­nia patients first

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

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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 tough questions

The way we approach Mental Health today is broken beyond repair. The question is, what comes next, and how fast can we get there?

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The hid­den links between men­tal dis­or­ders (Nature):

In 2018, psy­chi­a­trist Oleguer Plana-Ripoll was wrestling with a puz­zling fact about men­tal dis­or­ders. He knew that many indi­vid­u­als have mul­ti­ple con­di­tions — anx­i­ety and depres­sion, say, or schiz­o­phre­nia and bipo­lar dis­or­der. He want­ed to know how com­mon it was to have more than one diag­no­sis, so he got his hands on a data­base con­tain­ing the med­ical details of around 5.9 mil­lion Dan­ish citizens.

He was tak­en aback by what he found. Every sin­gle men­tal dis­or­der pre­dis­posed the patient to every oth­er men­tal dis­or­der — no mat­ter how dis­tinct the symp­toms. “We knew that comor­bid­i­ty was impor­tant, but we didn’t expect to find asso­ci­a­tions for all pairs,” says Plana-Ripoll, who is based at Aarhus Uni­ver­si­ty in Denmark.

[Read more…] about The way we approach Men­tal Health today is bro­ken beyond repair. The ques­tion is, what comes next, and how fast can we get there?

Should heads of state and candidates to high office pass a cognitive/ mental fitness test?

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Is it fair to ques­tion a pres­i­den­tial candidate’s men­tal fit­ness? (Salon):

“My heart sank as he floun­dered his way through his respons­es, fum­bling with his notes, unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly lost for words. He looked tired and bewil­dered,” Ron Rea­gan, the son of Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan, wrote of his father’s per­for­mance dur­ing the first 1984 pres­i­den­tial debate.

At the time, there had long been rumors that Rea­gan was suf­fer­ing from cog­ni­tive impair­ment — per­haps Alzheimer’s Dis­ease — and as he strug­gled dur­ing the first debate against his Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent, for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Wal­ter Mon­dale, those con­cerns threat­ened his reelec­tion cam­paign. He recov­ered dur­ing the sec­ond debate with a mem­o­rable quip, jok­ing that he would not allow age to become an issue in the cam­paign because “I am not going to exploit, for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es, my oppo­nen­t’s youth and inex­pe­ri­ence.” The audi­ence laughed, the nation moved on… and, a decade lat­er, Rea­gan announced to the world that he had been diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s [Read more…] about Should heads of state and can­di­dates to high office pass a cognitive/ men­tal fit­ness test?