therapy

Dos and Don’ts of Therapy on the Go: Navigating the use of apps for mental health care

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It might be sur­pris­ing to think about brows­ing for ther­a­pists and order­ing up men­tal health care the way you can peruse a menu on Grub­hub or sum­mon a car on Lyft.

But over the last decade, dig­i­tal access to ther­a­py has become increas­ing­ly com­mon, in some cas­es replac­ing the tra­di­tion­al mod­el of in-per­son week­ly ses­sions between a ther­a­pist and client.

Apps for men­tal health and well­ness range from mood track­ers, med­i­ta­tion tools and jour­nals to ther­a­py apps that match users to a licensed pro­fes­sion­al. My team’s research focus­es on ther­a­py apps that work by match­ing clients to a licensed pro­fes­sion­al. [Read more…] about Dos and Don’ts of Ther­a­py on the Go: Nav­i­gat­ing the use of apps for men­tal health care

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

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For the men­tal health cri­sis of care, qual­i­ty is as much of a prob­lem as quantity.

Most peo­ple who seek men­tal health care for the first time are baf­fled by how to find a clin­i­cian. I know what many par­ents felt. When my daugh­ter, Lara, fin­ished her first semes­ter at Ober­lin, she returned home to Atlanta thin and exhaust­ed. I was excit­ed to have her back home and entire­ly clue­less about her des­per­ate strug­gle with anorex­ia. In fact, as I learned lat­er, she had been dri­ven by obses­sions about her weight and her appear­ance for over a year by that point. As was true of Amy, her per­fec­tion­ism and her shame at not being per­fect kept her from shar­ing this strug­gle. And now, in a cri­sis after a year of anguish, she was ask­ing for help. As a pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try at the uni­ver­si­ty, I should have noticed her seri­ous men­tal ill­ness, and yet I missed it. At least, now that Lara was ask­ing for help, I should know where to find the best care. But the uni­ver­si­ty had no resources specif­i­cal­ly for eat­ing dis­or­ders, and I could not find a cen­ter for her treat­ment any bet­ter than Amy’s par­ents had. For­tu­nate­ly, Lara, ever the prob­lem solver, found an inten­sive out­pa­tient pro­gram with a superb ther­a­pist and began a long, suc­cess­ful road to recov­ery. But even as a pro­fes­sion­al in this space, I found it dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate the maze of care. The first issue is that there are so many dif­fer­ent types of pro­fes­sion­als: social work­ers, mar­riage and fam­i­ly coun­selors, clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gists, pro­fes­sion­al psy­chol­o­gists, psy­chi­a­trists —and they all call them­selves ther­a­pists. The choice real­ly mat­ters, because what you receive depends large­ly on whom you see.

This is not true for can­cer or asth­ma or heart dis­ease, but in men­tal health care, there is lit­tle con­sen­sus among the var­i­ous care providers as to how to approach even the most com­mon forms of men­tal ill­ness. [Read more…] about From “Emi­nence-based” to Evi­dence-based men­tal health­care: Time to focus on qual­i­ty and accountability

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

Study: Self-guided sleep app Sleepio, combined with standard care for depression and anxiety, delivers better outcomes than standard care alone

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Study backs ben­e­fit of insom­nia DTx Sleepio on men­tal health (pharmapho­rum):

The study – pub­lished in the jour­nal Behav­iour Research and Ther­a­py – test­ed the Sleepio app devel­oped by dig­i­tal health spe­cial­ist Big Health as an add-on to stan­dard NHS care for anx­i­ety and depres­sion under the improv­ing access to psy­cho­log­i­cal ther­a­pies (IAPT) policy.

Patients who signed up to use Sleepio – a six-week dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive behav­iour­al ther­a­py (CBT) course – achieved sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter improve­ment in symp­toms com­pared to con­trols, with an IAPT recov­ery rate of near­ly 65% ver­sus 58% in the con­trol group. [Read more…] about Study: Self-guid­ed sleep app Sleepio, com­bined with stan­dard care for depres­sion and anx­i­ety, deliv­ers bet­ter out­comes than stan­dard care alone

On cognitive reframing and biases, stress, mental health tech, Aduhelm backlash, Britney Spears, and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time nine sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try devel­op­ments to help pro­mote life­long brain and men­tal health.

#1. To low­er stress lev­els and improve prob­lem-solv­ing, prac­tice cog­ni­tive refram­ing instead of venting

“… vent­ing like­ly doesn’t soothe anger as much as aug­ment it. That’s because encour­ag­ing peo­ple to act out their anger makes them relive it in their bod­ies, strength­en­ing the neur­al path­ways for anger and mak­ing it eas­i­er to get angry the next time around. Stud­ies on vent­ing anger (with­out effec­tive feed­back), whether online or ver­bal­ly, have also found it to be gen­er­al­ly unhelp­ful … To get out of that, you can ask the per­son to step back and help you reframe your expe­ri­ence by ask­ing, “How should I think about this dif­fer­ent­ly?” or “What should I do in this situation?”

#2. Head­space and Gin­ger merge to expand and scale up dig­i­tal men­tal health

“The new com­pa­ny would find it push­ing well beyond its cur­rent mind­ful­ness focus to, “pro­vide the full spec­trum of proven, effec­tive vir­tu­al sup­port – from mind­ful­ness and med­i­ta­tion, to text-based behav­ioral health coach­ing, to video-based ther­a­py and psy­chi­a­try – for all types of patient populations.”

Ambi­tious move!

#3. How to read, under­stand and write great med­ical research

12 good tips for stu­dents and every­one else

#4. Vet­er­ans Affairs won’t cov­er Biogen’s new “Alzheimer’s drug” giv­en con­cerns over safe­ty and lack of evidence

Their inde­pen­dent review con­cludes that “giv­en the lack of evi­dence of a robust and mean­ing­ful clin­i­cal ben­e­fit and the known safe­ty sig­nal, we rec­om­mend against offer­ing this agent to patients with Alzheimer’s demen­tia (mild or oth­er­wise) or mild cog­ni­tive impairment.”

#5. Alzheimer’s & Demen­tia researchers chal­lenge FDA’s approval of Aduhelm giv­en lack of evi­dence for beta-amy­loid as a marker

A strong call to “learn how this reg­u­la­to­ry fail­ure occurred and to ensure that it doesn’t occur again”

#6. Debunk­ing four myths about deci­sion-mak­ing capac­i­ty to keep Brit­ney Spears and oth­ers safe

Address­ing the ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy about con­ser­va­tor­ships, a USC Pro­fes­sor of Law, Psy­chol­o­gy, and Psy­chi­a­try shares a great arti­cle to debunk these all-too-com­mon myths

#7. Study exam­ines com­mon cog­ni­tive bias­es (have you tried this brain teas­er?) and ways to mit­i­gate them

If you have not encoun­tered the “Lin­da brain teas­er” before, please give it a try! If you have, you’ll enjoy the new paper titled Tver­sky and Kahneman’s Cog­ni­tive Illu­sions: Who Can Solve Them, and Why?

#8. Inte­grat­ing music, move­ment and stroke reha­bil­i­ta­tion, MedRhythms rais­es $25M to devel­op and com­mer­cial­ize dig­i­tal therapeutic

Fas­ci­nat­ing approach to gait training.

#9. Neu­rotech start-up Paradromics rais­es $20M to address brain-relat­ed dis­or­ders via next-gen brain-com­put­er interfaces

Neu­ralink vs. Paradromics vs. non-inva­sive plat­forms — quite a stim­u­lat­ing space to track

 

Wish­ing you and yours a hap­py and healthy back-to-school and month of September,

The Sharp­Brains Team

Headspace and Ginger merge to expand and scale up digital mental health

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Head­space and Gin­ger are merg­ing to form Head­space Health (TechCrunch):

Med­i­ta­tion app Head­space this morn­ing announced plans to merge with on-demand men­tal health ser­vice Gin­ger. Bar­ring unfore­seen reg­u­la­to­ry road­blocks, the two com­pa­nies will com­bine to form Head­space Health. The new orga­ni­za­tion would sport a com­bined val­ue of $3 bil­lion and a head­count of more than 800.

The merg­er comes dur­ing accel­er­at­ed usage of both par­ties, as a seem­ing­ly end­less pan­dem­ic has put a strain on men­tal health across the globe and many have turned to vir­tu­al solu­tions to address the grow­ing prob­lem. [Read more…] about Head­space and Gin­ger merge to expand and scale up dig­i­tal men­tal health