psychiatrist

8‑week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course found to be as effective as Lexapro (escitalopram) to treat adults with anxiety disorders, and with far fewer side effects

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Cred­it: Brain­Post, with data from Hoge et al (2022)

Anx­i­ety is the most com­mon psy­chi­atric dis­or­der, with over 301 mil­lion ?peo­ple affect­ed around the world. Whether extreme anx­i­ety aris­es in social sit­u­a­tions, is trig­gered by a par­tic­u­lar pho­bia, or man­i­fests as a gen­er­al unease in the world, it can severe­ly affect people’s every­day func­tion­ing and lead to high lev­els of distress.

Luck­i­ly, there are good treat­ments for anx­i­ety, includ­ing Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (or CBT) and var­i­ous phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drugs. Still, CBT takes a high­ly-trained ther­a­pist to admin­is­ter and can be lengthy and expen­sive, mak­ing it inac­ces­si­ble to many peo­ple who need it. And, while drug ther­a­pies can work well and are often cov­ered by insur­ers, they may not be accept­able for peo­ple who wor­ry about the poten­tial side effects of putting a drug in their body. [Read more…] about 8‑week Mind­ful­ness-Based Stress Reduc­tion (MBSR) course found to be as effec­tive as Lexapro (esc­i­talo­pram) to treat adults with anx­i­ety dis­or­ders, and with far few­er side effects

Promote brain plasticity and keep your mind at ease by taking your daily “exercise pill”

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As with many oth­er physi­cians, rec­om­mend­ing phys­i­cal activ­i­ty to patients was just a doc­tor chore for me – until a few years ago. That was because I myself was not very active. Over the years, as I picked up box­ing and became more active, I got first­hand expe­ri­ence of pos­i­tive impacts on my mind. I also start­ed research­ing the effects of dance and move­ment ther­a­pies on trau­ma and anx­i­ety in refugee chil­dren, and I learned a lot more about the neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy of exer­cise. [Read more…] about Pro­mote brain plas­tic­i­ty and keep your mind at ease by tak­ing your dai­ly “exer­cise pill”

Next: Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy?

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How ecsta­sy and psilo­cy­bin are shak­ing up psy­chi­a­try (Nature):

… The Impe­r­i­al study was one of a spate of clin­i­cal tri­als launched over the past few years using illic­it psy­che­del­ic drugs such as psilo­cy­bin, lyser­gic acid diethy­lamide (LSD) and MDMA (3,4‑methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as mol­ly or ecsta­sy) to treat men­tal-health dis­or­ders, gen­er­al­ly with the close guid­ance of a psy­chi­a­trist or psy­chother­a­pist. The idea has been around for decades — or cen­turies in some cul­tures — but the momen­tum has picked up dras­ti­cal­ly over the past few years as investors and sci­en­tists have begun to cham­pi­on the approach again. [Read more…] about Next: Psy­che­del­ic-assist­ed psychotherapy?

Mental Health Innovation and Dr. Tom Insel: from the NIMH to Google/ Verily Life Sciences to Startup Mindstrong

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For­mer Alpha­bet exec is work­ing on an idea to detect men­tal health dis­or­ders by how you type on your phone (CNBC):

“Can a smart­phone detect whether a user is sui­ci­dal or depressed?

That’s the promise of an explod­ing num­ber of men­tal health entre­pre­neurs, who are explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to mon­i­tor users’ smart­phone behav­ior to detect a vari­ety of symp­toms — all with their con­sent. [Read more…] about Men­tal Health Inno­va­tion and Dr. Tom Insel: from the NIMH to Google/ Ver­i­ly Life Sci­ences to Start­up Mindstrong

Is Mental Health ready to start transitioning towards measurable brain circuits, away from subjective symptoms?

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mental-healthTo Diag­nose Men­tal Ill­ness, Read the Brain (Sci­en­tif­ic American):

Although sci­en­tists have learned a lot about the brain in the last few decades, approach­es to treat­ing men­tal ill­ness­es have not kept up. As neu­ro­sci­en­tists learn more about brain cir­cuits, Stan­ford psy­chi­a­trist Amit Etkin fore­sees a time when diag­noses will be based on brain scans rather than symp­toms [Read more…] about Is Men­tal Health ready to start tran­si­tion­ing towards mea­sur­able brain cir­cuits, away from sub­jec­tive symptoms?

Study: An innovative telehealth service to provide high quality ADHD treatment

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telehealth_adhd.

An unfor­tu­nate real­i­ty is that many chil­dren with ADHD do not have access to high qual­i­ty, evi­dence-based treat­ment for ADHD. This is espe­cial­ly true in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties where chil­dren are gen­er­al­ly treat­ed by pri­ma­ry care providers who may have less ADHD-spe­cif­ic train­ing than child psy­chi­a­trists and where [Read more…] about Study: An inno­v­a­tive tele­health ser­vice to pro­vide high qual­i­ty ADHD treatment