Study on the “ABCs of Mental Health” finds that simply believing you can improve mental wellbeing helps actually improve it

The num­ber of peo­ple strug­gling with poor men­tal health and men­tal dis­or­ders has been ris­ing around the world over the past few decades. Those who are strug­gling are increas­ing­ly fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties access­ing the kind of sup­port they need – leav­ing many wait­ing months for help, if they even qual­i­fy for treat­ment. While it’s clear that…

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Digital therapeutics pioneer Akili Interactive plans to go public in mid-2022 at a $1B valuation

Pal­i­hapi­tiya-Led SPAC to Merge With Akili in $1 Bil­lion Deal (Bloomberg): Akili Inter­ac­tive, a start­up that has devel­oped a video game to help treat atten­­tion-deficit dis­or­ders in kids, has agreed to go pub­lic through a merg­er with one of Chamath Palihapitiya’s blank-check com­pa­nies. The deal, which con­firms a Bloomberg News report, val­ues the com­bined entity…

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Large study finds positive yet mixed results from Akili’s digital therapeutic for kids with ADHD

__ Full pub­li­ca­tion of piv­otal tri­al data out­lines Akil­i’s case for FDA reg­u­la­tion (Mobi­Health­News): “A full tran­script of STARS-ADHD — the piv­otal tri­al of Akili Interactive’s video game-like pedi­atric atten­tion deficit treat­ment — has been pub­lished in The Lancet Dig­i­tal Health jour­nal, pro­vid­ing onlook­ers a clear view of data fuel­ing the dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic company’s pending…

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Machine-learning study finds EEG brain signatures that predict response to antidepressant treatments

– Brain-wave pat­tern can iden­ti­fy peo­ple like­ly to respond to anti­de­pres­sant, study finds (Stan­ford Med­i­cine press release): “A new method of inter­pret­ing brain activ­i­ty could poten­tial­ly be used in clin­ics to help deter­mine the best treat­ment options for depres­sion, accord­ing to a study led by researchers at the Stan­ford School of Med­i­cine. Stan­ford researchers and…

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Study finds combined pharma + non-pharma treatment most beneficial to help youth with ADHD address long-term academic difficulties

__ Aca­d­e­m­ic dif­fi­cul­ties are one of the most impor­tant adverse con­se­quences of ADHD, and they fre­quent­ly con­tribute to par­ents’ deci­sion to seek treat­ment for their child. Whether treat­ment con­sis­tent­ly yields a pos­i­tive impact on long-term aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess is thus an impor­tant issue; how­ev­er, the answer to this ques­tion has been some­what controversial.

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