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mental illness

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

May 9, 2022 by SharpBrains Leave a Comment

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

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Big Health, digital health, digital therapeutics, Digital Therapeutics Alliance, DTx, FDA, Happify Health, mental health apps, mental illness, meta-analysis, Orexo, PEAR, PLOS Digital Health

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

April 26, 2022 by The Conversation Leave a Comment

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

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: ageing, brain changes, brain charts, brain scans, brain-development, computerised tomography, lifespan, magnetic resonance imaging, mental illness, neuroimaging

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

February 2, 2022 by SharpBrains

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

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: behavioral-therapy, Jolly Good, mental illness, neurological therapeutics, Otsuka, pharmaceutical, schizophrenia, social skills training, therapy

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

June 28, 2021 by Kaiser Health News

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

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: anxiety, BetterHelp, brain-illness, Brightside, cerebral, depression, digital behavioral health, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, Ginger, health apps, mental health, mental illness, mental-health-treatment, Mindstrong Health, TalkLife, Talkspace, Woebot

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

June 3, 2020 by SharpBrains

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?

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: anxiety, biological, bipolar-disorder, depression, Genetics, JAMA Psychiatry, mental illness, mental-disorders, National-Institute-of-Mental-Health, neuroanatomy, psychopathology, Research Domain Criteria, schizophrenia

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

May 27, 2020 by SharpBrains

Shut­ter­stock

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?

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Alzheimers-disease, Cognitive-impairment, mental health, mental illness, mental-fitness

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