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Tag: depression
10/25/2023

Digital Mental Health Research Wins Distinguished Paper Award

Article Excerpt: Co-authors Andrew Campbell, professor of computer science, HealthX Lab graduate students Subigya Nepal and Weichen Wang, and Jeremy Huckins, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences won a Distinguished Paper Award at the 2023 ACM UbiComp Conference for their paper titled “GLOBEM: Cross-Dataset Generalization of Longitudinal Human Behavior Modeling.” Eight out of 210 papers received the Distinguished Paper Award, presented at UbiComp and published in Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (Volume 6).

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/4h4xcrsf

Article Source: Dartmouth Computer Science News

08/28/2023

Long-term participant retention and engagement patterns in an app and wearable-based multinational remote digital depression study

Zhang Y, Pratap A, Folarin AA, Sun S, Cummins N, Matcham F, Vairavan S, Dineley J, Ranjan Y, Rashid Z, Conde P, Stewart C, White KM, Oetzmann C, Ivan A, Lamers F, Siddi S, Rambla CH, Simblett S, Nica R, Mohr DC, Myin-Germeys I, Wykes T, Maria Haro J, Penninx BWJH, Annas P, Narayan VA, Hotopf M, Dobson RJB. (2023). Long-term participant retention and engagement patterns in an app and wearable-based multinational remote digital depression study. NPJ Digital Medicine, 6(1), 25–25. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-023-00749-3

This paper reported findings related to long-term participant retention and engagement in a large observational digital study for depression, using survey and passive sensor data collected via smartphones and Fitbit devices. Participants (N=614) were recruited from three sites in the United Kingdom, Spain and Netherlands. Data were collected for up to 2 years by the EU research program RADAR-MDD. The majority of participants (68%) remained engaged in the study after 43 weeks. Smartphone and Fitbit usage data showed 3 distinct engagement subgroups for each data stream (most engaged, medium engaged, and least engaged). The least engaged group tended to have the highest depression severity and took significantly longer to respond to survey notifications. The least engaged were on average 5 years younger than the most engaged group. Roughly 45% of participants who stopped completing surveys after 8 weeks continued to share Fitbit data (average of 42 weeks). Findings could inform the design of future digital health studies to enable equitable and balanced data collection from diverse populations.

08/09/2023

Black Women are Open to Mental Health Services Via Mobile Technology

Article Excerpt: Using survey data on patient attitudes toward mental health services and depression screening, a new study indicated that Black American Women are comfortable with using voice or video calls to communicate with mental health providers. Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that about one in ten women in the United States have experienced depression symptoms within the last year. The study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR), also indicated that Black American women are commonly affected by depression. While discrimination, financial issues, and chronic conditions may contribute to this, various factors prevent Black women from obtaining care. These may include stigmatization, limited access, or insurance complications.

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/ywhh2svm

Article Source: mHealth Intelligence

06/08/2023

The Tech Solutions Helping Battle Depression and Anxiety

Article Excerpt: Though COVID-19 is no longer classified as a global health emergency, the spike in mental health disorders that accompanied the rapid spread of the virus hasn’t abated… the rise in mental health conditions has also meant that more people are comfortable seeking support. As a result, there’s never been more demand for health and wellbeing services with the behavioral health market expected to grow to $105 billion by 2029. And tech innovators continue to develop solutions that address specific gaps in the treatment pipeline, democratize access to treatment such as therapy and provide tools to manage our wellbeing holistically.

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/yckvvf35

Article Source: 150sec

06/01/2023

How Does Marijuana Affect the Brain? Psychological Researchers Examine Impact on Different Age Groups Over Time

Article Excerpt: Although scientists are working to answer important questions about consuming cannabis, one of the gaping holes in the field is a reliable method of quantifying how many milligrams of THC are in the multitude of products available, said Dartmouth College’s Alan Budney, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and biomedical science who specializes in cannabis research… Budney is now preparing to launch a survey of 15,000 users who will report not only the detailed information about their cannabis consumption but also how the products are affecting them in terms of depression, anxiety, cannabis use disorder symptoms, and quality of life.

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/42zuuxms

Article Source: American Psychological Association

05/09/2023

Personalization strategies in digital mental health interventions: a systematic review and conceptual framework for depressive symptoms

Hornstein S, Zantvoort K, Lueken U, Funk B, Hilbert K. (2023). Personalization strategies in digital mental health interventions: a systematic review and conceptual framework for depressive symptoms. Front. Digit. Health 5:1170002. doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2023.1170002

The aim of this systematic literature review was to explore how personalization is utilized and what benefits it has for digital mental health interventions (DMHIs). The search included empirical studies on DMHIs targeting depression in adults from 2015 to 2022, which resulted in 138 articles and 94 distinct DMHIs. Personalization was operationalized as purposefully designed variation between individuals in an intervention’s therapeutic elements or its structure. Furthermore, personalization strategies were differentiated by what is personalized (i.e., content, level of guidance, content order) and the mechanism (i.e., user choice, provider choice, machine learning). Applying this definition, researchers identified personalization in 66% of the interventions included, with personalized intervention content (32%) and communication with the end user (30%) as most prevalent. Personalization via automated if-then-decision rules (48%) and user choice (36%) were the most commonly used mechanisms, while application of machine learning was rare (3%). Overall, this review demonstrated that the majority of DMHIs for depression use personalization approaches; however, future interventions could provide tailoring on more dimensions of the intervention experience and may benefit from using machine learning models. Additionally, empirical evidence for the benefits of personalization was scarce and further evidence is needed.

04/27/2023

ChatGPT Is Giving Therapy. a Mental Health Revolution May Be Next

Article Excerpt: ChatGPT itself warns that it is not a replacement for a psychologist or counsellor. But that has not stopped some people from using the platform as their personal therapist. In posts on online forums such as Reddit, users have described their experiences asking ChatGPT for advice about personal problems and difficult life events like breakups. Some have reported their experience with the chatbot being as good or better than traditional therapy.

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/ybekzdkp

Article Source: Aljazeera

03/10/2023

‘Simple but Effective’: Colombia Turns to Algorithms to Bolster Mental Health Services

Article Excerpt: At the age of 70, Carmen Suárez* is finally coming to terms with an event that happened five decades ago. It was a trauma that changed the course of her life and left her with depression. “I used to cry uncontrollably,” she says. “I was told to seek help, but I had neither the time nor the money. I realise now that I was stuck reliving the incident.” Over the course of a year, the Diada project (detection and integrated care for depression and alcohol use), an innovative project aimed at identifying people with or at risk of developing a mental health or alcohol use disorder, helped her recover.

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/2jrfnkdt

Article Source: The Guardian

02/28/2023

MHT Delivers New Technology for Measuring and Improving Mental Wellness

Article Excerpt: Mental Health Technologies (MHT) offers a rapidly growing cloud-based platform primary care physicians and mental health professionals use to screen and test for mental health disorders, including depression and substance abuse. MHT helps providers identify areas where their patients are struggling and refers them to the proper behavioral healthcare professional…SmarTest is a tool that uses intelligence and historical data to define when-and how-a patient should be tested for various mental health conditions. It can base its decisions on patient information, such as age, gender, or other demographics.

Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/6ruxh22t

Article Source: Accesswire