medicalcondition:post-traumatic stress disorder

The smartphone app that can tell you’re depressed before you know it yourself - MIT Technology Review
▻https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612266/the-smartphone-app-that-can-tell-youre-depressed-before-you-know-i

https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/20180919jchoumitmindstrong12391fnl.jpg?cx=0&cy=249&cw=3000&ch=1687&sw=1200

A startup founded in Palo Alto, California, by a trio of doctors, including the former director of the US National Institute of Mental Health, is trying to prove that our obsession with the technology in our pockets can help treat some of today’s most intractable medical problems: depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse.

Mindstrong Health is using a smartphone app to collect measures of people’s cognition and emotional health as indicated by how they use their phones. Once a patient installs Mindstrong’s app, it monitors things like the way the person types, taps, and scrolls while using other apps. This data is encrypted and analyzed remotely using machine learning, and the results are shared with the patient and the patient’s medical provider.

The seemingly mundane minutiae of how you interact with your phone offers surprisingly important clues to your mental health, according to Mindstrong’s research—revealing, for example, a relapse of depression.

The seemingly mundane minutiae of how you interact with your phone offers surprisingly important clues to your mental health, according to Mindstrong’s research—revealing, for example, a relapse of depression.❞

For now, Insel says, the company is working mainly with seriously ill people who are at risk of relapse for problems like depression, schizophrenia, and substance abuse. “This is meant for the most severely disabled people, who are really needing some innovation,” he says. “There are people who are high utilizers of health care and they’re not getting the benefits, so we’ve got to figure out some way to get them something that works better.” Actually predicting that a patient is headed toward a downward spiral is a harder task, but Dagum believes that having more people using the app over time will help cement patterns in the data.

There are thorny issues to consider, of course. Privacy, for one: while Mindstrong says it protects users’ data, collecting such data at all could be a scary prospect for many of the people it aims to help. Companies may be interested in, say, including it as part of an employee wellness plan, but most of us wouldn’t want our employers anywhere near our mental health data, no matter how well protected it may be.

#Données_médicales #Maladie_mentale #Surveillance #Algorithmes_prédictifs #Hubris_scientifique

Can Underground Psychedelic Therapy Ever Go Mainstream ? - Pacific Standard
▻https://psmag.com/social-justice/can-underground-psychedelic-therapy-ever-go-mainstream

https://psmag.com/.image/t_share/MTUwNzc4NjU4MzA1MzUzMjU0/ehimetalor-unuabona-270319.jpg

Hallucinogenic therapy, a longstanding underground therapeutic movement, is now reaching research institutions like Johns Hopkins. Studies explore the ability of psychedelics to amplify access to thoughts and feelings. Research results are promising enough that the Food and Drug Administration recently designated MDMA-assisted psychotherapy a “breakthrough therapy” for post-traumatic stress disorder, which essentially fast-tracks the last phase of clinical trials before medicalization.

“You can get to content that usually would have heightened defenses,” Holly says of psychedelic therapy. “It’s assisted therapy. It’s really all it is.” A 2016 study in the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration found that, for successful psychotherapy outcomes, “the most important common factor was the therapeutic alliance,” meaning the relationship between the patient and therapist.

#Psychédéliques #Usage_médical #Santé_mentale #Santé_publique

swissinfo.ch | Trop peu de places de thérapie pour les victimes de torture et de guerre
▻http://asile.ch/2017/02/01/swissinfo-ch-de-places-de-therapie-victimes-de-torture-de-guerre

Les réfugiés provenant de pays en guerre ou de dictatures ont souvent vécu des choses terribles. Ils ont vu des hommes mourir, ont perdu des membres de leur famille ou ont peut-être été victimes de torture ou de violence. Une Conférence tenue à Berne a mis en évidence qu’en Suisse, les migrants traumatisés ne sont […]

Many Prostitutes Suffer Combat Disorder, Study Finds - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/18/science/many-prostitutes-suffer-combat-disorder-study-finds.html

In a study to be presented today at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco, researchers interviewed almost 500 prostitutes from around the world and discovered that two-thirds suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. In contrast, the condition is found in less than 5 percent of the general population. Studies of veterans of combat in the Vietnam War have found that the disorder may be diagnosed in 20 percent to 30 percent, about half of whom have long-term psychiatric problems.

▻http://seenthis.net/messages/472837
#prostitution #1998

How an army of DC Pharma lobbyists have locked in one of the biggest ripoff schemes in America
▻http://www.rawstory.com/2016/03/how-an-army-of-pharma-lobbyists-in-dc-have-locked-in-one-of-the-biggest-ri

#corruption_légale #vol #argent_public #lobbying #etats-unis #pharma #big_pharma

Ingenious: Rachel Yehuda - Issue 31: Stress
▻http://nautil.us/issue/31/stress/ingenious-rachel-yehuda

http://static.nautil.us/7970_ec1093fe1626f25b1845d04dd6f55dd2.png

Although post-traumatic stress disorder is an established diagnosis in psychology, and stressed combat veterans are a cliché in Hollywood, it wasn’t long ago when PTSD wasn’t well understood at all. “There was a time when our lack of knowledge about post-traumatic stress disorder was really harmful and resulted in the fact that a lot of people did not get treated or treated properly by the healthcare system,” says Rachel Yehuda. In the past 25 years, Yehuda has done as much as any scientist to understand the debilitating disorder. Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, is the director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. She has worked with war veterans, Holocaust survivors, and other trauma victims to gather insights (...)

Health of men, women, and children in post-trafficking services in Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam: an observational cross-sectional study - The Lancet Global Health
▻http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(15)70016-1/fulltext?rss=yes

Methods

We carried out face-to-face interviews with a consecutive sample of individuals entering 15 post-trafficking services in Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. We asked participants about living and working conditions, experience of violence, and health outcomes. We measured symptoms of anxiety and depression with the Hopkins Symptoms Checklist and post-traumatic stress disorder with the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, and used adjusted logistic regression models to estimate the effect of trafficking on these mental health outcomes, controlling for age, sector of exploitation, and time in trafficking.

Findings

We interviewed 1102 people, of whom 1015 reached work destinations. Participants worked in various sectors including sex work (329 [32%]), fishing (275 [27%]), and factories (136 [13%]). 481 (48%) of 1015 experienced physical violence, sexual violence, or both, with 198 (35%) of 566 women and girls reporting sexual violence. 478 (47%) of 1015 participants were threatened and 198 (20%) were locked in a room. 685 (70%) of 985 who had data available worked 7 days per week and 296 (30%) of 989 worked at least 11 hours per day. 222 (22%) of 983 had a serious injury at work. 61·2% (95% CI 58·2–64·2) of participants reported symptom of depression, 42·8% (39·8–45·9) reported symptoms of anxiety, and 38·9% (36·0–42·0) reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. 5·2% (4·0–6·8) had attempted suicide in the past month. Participants who experienced extremely excessive overtime at work, restricted freedom, bad living conditions, threats, or severe violence were more likely to report symptoms of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

#migrations #trafic #violence #santé #viol

Mass. General researchers to build next generation of brain implants - Health & wellness - The Boston Globe
▻http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2014/05/26/mass-general-researchers-build-next-generation-brain-implants/A3uGYuNJkRYPN1sECgJERM/story.html

Boston researchers will build a generation of brain implants under an ambitious Defense Department program aimed at pioneering more precise ways to treat mental illnesses suffered by combat veterans, including post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and depression.

The $30 million, five-year project being announced Tuesday is one of the first pieces of President Obama’s BRAIN initiative, unveiled last year in an attempt to foster a revolution in neuroscience similar to the one that occurred when the human genome was sequenced a little more than a decade ago. A second team at the University of California San Francisco will receive $26 million, also for work on brain implants.

The research is inspired by a technology already used in tens of thousands of patients: deep brain stimulators that trigger electrical impulses in part of the brain to quell tremors in Parkinson’s disease. But unlike those simple technologies, the new implants will be responsive, including a network of sensors that can read what is happening in the brain and stimulate multiple brain areas if abnormal activity is detected.

Un grand classique : comme il n’y a pas de fric pour s’occuper des anciens combattants (conditions d’accueil désastreuses, délais d’attente hallucinant pour les consultations, scandales répétés,…) on va trouver une solution technique en leur implantant des électrodes dans le cerveau.

Ça, c’est de la recherche pas de (erk !) l’aide sociale, on peut financer.

#guerre #violence et #santé_mentale : le cas de #Timor-Leste
▻http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(14)70238-4/fulltext?rss=yes

What effect does such a prolonged period of extreme violence and instability have on the mental wellbeing of the affected population? In the case of Timor-Leste, a remarkable resilience was revealed. A study done in 2004 showed a relatively low prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and severe distress compared with other conflict-affected regions. Why might this be and would it be sustained in the long term in a country still struggling with poverty and underlying tensions? Derrick Silove and colleagues’ Article in this month’s issue shows clearly that this apparent early resilience was fragile. Coming just 2 years after Timor-Leste was declared independent, the early findings, also by Silove’s team, seem to have been the product of an “initial sense of optimism” within the population. The current follow-up survey, done in 2010—11, revealed a seven-fold increase in PTSD and a three-fold increase in severe distress.
The findings underscore the crucial need for longitudinal data in post-conflict settings.