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

By SharpBrains | February 2, 2022

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…

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Happify Health raises $73M to deepen partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and insurance payers

By SharpBrains | March 17, 2021

Hap­pi­fy Health rais­es $73M to expand its dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic care deliv­ery capa­bil­i­ties (Mobi­Health News): Found­ed in 2012, Hap­pi­fy is best known for dig­i­tal pro­grams that pro­vid­ed auto­mat­ed self-guid­ed sup­port across var­i­ous areas of men­tal health and well­ness, such as stress man­age­ment for employ­ees or health plan mem­bers. Should the user need addi­tion­al sup­port, the platform…

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Study: Over-the-counter “brain enhancement” supplements in the US found both to a) contain multiple unapproved drugs and b) lack some ingredients listed on the label

By SharpBrains | October 20, 2020

Study: Your Brain Sup­ple­ments Could Con­tain Dan­ger­ous, Ille­gal Ingre­di­ents (Being Patient): Brain sup­ple­ments that claim to boost cog­ni­tive func­tion are increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar, grow­ing from a $4 bil­lion indus­try of about 4,000 unique prod­ucts to a $40 bil­lion indus­try with as many as 80,000 dif­fer­ent prod­ucts on the market. 

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From Mental Health to Behavioral Health…and back?

By SharpBrains | February 15, 2018

___ Know Thy­self: Well-Being and Sub­jec­tive Expe­ri­ence (Cere­brum): “Ancient Greek philoso­phers were fond of the apho­rism, “know thy­self,” inscribed above the entrance of one of the Tem­ples of Apol­lo at Del­phi. One expres­sion of this tra­di­tion, vari­ably attrib­uted to Socrates and Pla­to, is that “the unex­am­ined life is not worth liv­ing.” Anoth­er, attrib­uted to Aristotle,…

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With pharma exiting Alzheimer’s research, new hope (and urgency) seen in the combination of brain training and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)

By SharpBrains | January 22, 2018

___ What does the future hold for the war on Alzheimer’s? (The Globe and Mail): “After spend­ing huge sums on clin­i­cal trails in recent years, the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try has failed to find a drug that can halt the mind-rob­bing dis­ease. And this month, Pfiz­er announced it is end­ing its Alzheimer’s research, although oth­er com­pa­nies haven’t thrown…

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Study: Rates of ADHD diagnosis and medication treatment continue to increase substantially

By Dr. David Rabiner | March 22, 2017

— Begin­ning in about 1990, sub­stan­tial increas­es in the rates of ADHD diag­no­sis and med­ical treat­ment were found in sev­er­al nation­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ples of US physi­cian office vis­its. For exam­ple, between 1995–96 and 2007-08, the num­ber of office vis­its at which an ADHD diag­no­sis was made increased by over 400% in adults — from 3.1…

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