Recent high-profile events have elevated the national discussion about mental illness and how best to circumvent potentially disastrous outcomes.Supply and demand of mental and behavioral health care services sit at the heart of the problem, and while various schools of thought exist as to the solution, most in the industry agree on one point: the behavioral health access crisis has reached a tipping point. From extreme shortages in psychiatric beds—numbering roughly 14 per every 100,000 people
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Is Specialization a Contributing Factor to Deteriorating Mental Health Care?
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - Robert A. HeinleinIn almost every walk of life, we worship at the altar of specific expertise. It
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Medibio Launches Mental Health Measurement App for Apple Watch
Medibio Limited, a world leader in objective measurement technology for mental health, announced today the release of a personal, mental health measurement technology app for Apple Watch users.With the Medibio app, Apple Watch users will be able to capture and process specific biometric features that reflect the performance of the body's autonomic nervous system (ANS) to create an objective view of their mental health.Users have the ability use the Medibio app in conjunction with Apple Watch
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Lyra Health Raises $45M to Connect Employees to Effective Mental Health Providers
Lyra Health, a Burlingame, CA-based digital health startup has raised $45 million in Series B funding to expand access to effective mental healthcare for companies and their employees. The round included participation from new investors Tenaya Capital, Glynn Capital, Crown Ventures, and Casdin Capital with existing investors including Greylock Partners, Venrock, and Providence Ventures. The company plans to use the latest round of founding to develop technology that improves treatment outcomes
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Big Health, Castlight Health Partner to Offer Clinically-Proven Employee Mental Health Solution
Digital medicine company Big Health, today announced a new partnership with leading health navigation platform provider Castlight Health. Now through Castlight’s suite of digital health and wellness solutions, employers will be able to seamlessly deliver improved sleep and mental health to their employees with Big Health’s digital sleep improvement program Sleepio.Sleepio is clinically proven to help individuals overcome insomnia as well as improve anxiety and depression via a web and mobile
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Why The Mental Health Industry Is Ripe For Innovation
Technology has been tested and proven effective in many advanced and innovative industries, and is now extending and applying its benefits to more regulated industries such as healthcare. According to Mary Meeker's Internet Trends 2017 report, healthcare is “at a digital inflection point.” She recognized and attributed this change in part to the increase of data collection from fitness trackers and health apps as well as the increase of hospitals sharing healthcare data with patients.As part of
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Can Telemedicine Transform the Mental Health Care Delivery Model?
People who suffer from mental illness not only struggle with their condition, but oftentimes struggle to get care. This is especially concerning when you consider that mental illness affects 1 in 5 people or 43 million in the US and that number is growing.1 These individuals stand to benefit from behavioral health counseling and support, but unfortunately their need is met with a shortage of mental health professionals. In fact, according to the U.S. Health Resources and Services
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Therachat Unveils AI-Chatbot Platform to Augment Therapy Sessions
Therachat, a smart journaling tool for therapists and their clients, today launched the next generation of its HIPAA-compliant platform designed to augment therapy sessions. The smart journaling application provides therapists with a customizable platform to assign homework to clients (like journaling and emotion tracking), direct messaging and text message analysis -- powered by artificial intelligence (AI).Beset by ignorant stigmas and bracing for funding cuts, mental health care faces a
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Parity Not Apparent: Mental Health Still Not Receiving Equal Attention
Getting legislation through Congress—often a monumental battle, as demonstrated by recent efforts to pass the American Health Care Act—is one thing. But implementing new laws may be a greater challenge simply because they require so much sustained energy and attention.Take mental health parity laws, for example.Congress passed the Mental Health Parity Act (MHPA) championed by Sens. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and Pete Domenici (R-NM) in 1996. The law prohibits employee-sponsored group health plans
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Shouldn’t We Have A Human Genome Project for Mental Illness As Well?
Success in understanding, treating and preventing specific diseases has often resulted from concentrated research initiatives backed by strong sponsors and robust funding. A great example: the extraordinary 13- year long national Human Genome Project (HGP) that not only achieved its goal of mapping the genes in human DNA, but also unearthed the genetic roots of many diseases. Jointly undertaken in 1990 by the Department of Energy and the National Institute of Health, with a total cost of $3.8
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