Tag: technology

Reading of the Week: Postsecondary Students & Mental Illness (CJP), a New Podcast (CAMH), and Bipolar & Social Media (NYT)

October 3, 2019 /

From the Editor

Social media. An uncertain job market. Increasing academic demands.

Is life for our postsecondary students harder than ever? And are we seeing a surge in mental health disorders as a result?

In the first selection, we consider a new Canadian Journal of Psychiatry paper on postsecondary education and mental illness. While many have opinions on this topic, the University of Toronto’s Kathryn Wiens and her co-authors seek to add data to the discussion. Drawing on the Canadian Community Health Survey, they find: “The results do not imply the emergence of a mental health crisis among postsecondary students.”

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In the second selection, we look at a new podcast considering technology and education. I interview some accomplished educators, including the University of Toronto’s David Goldbloom. “This is about challenging our own norms, values and expectations as clinicians.”

And in the final selection, we consider a New York Times essay on bipolar and social media. “Facebook snitched our big family secret: Roland, the literary prodigy, the tenderhearted musician, the Ivy League grad, was bipolar.”

DG

 

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Reading of the Week: Technology & Psychiatry – Can Virtual Reality Help with Pain? Or Social Anxiety?

April 20, 2017 /

From the Editor

VR. e-therapies.

New technology is changing the way we think about the delivery of psychiatric services. But new isn’t necessarily better. Can care really be transformed? What does the literature say?

U.S. President Barack Obama tries virtual reality glasses as he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel (R) tour Hanover Messe Trade Fair in Hanover, Germany April 25, 2016. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

VR: more than just a presidential photo op?

In a two-part Reading of the Week series, we look at technology and psychiatry.

This week, Virtual Reality.

Next week, e-therapies.

This week, we consider a new paper that looks at virtual reality to treat pain in hospitalized patients. The authors find that people utilizing VR have less pain as compared to controls. This finding leads us to another recent paper on VR; in this second study, patients with social anxiety are treated with a VR intervention.

DG

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Reading of the Week: Can Crowdsourcing Treat Depression?

April 23, 2015 /

Social networks aspire to connect people, which is a noble but naive goal. When we uncritically accept connection as a good thing, we overlook difficult, important questions: Are some forms of virtual communication more nourishing than others? Might some in fact be harmful? Is it possible that Facebook, for instance, leaves some people feeling more lonely? No one knows for sure. We tend to build things first and worry about the effects they have on us later.

Robert Morris is taking the opposite approach. Starting with the desired effect of helping people deal with depression, he developed Panoply, a crowdsourced website for improving mental health.

So begins this week’s Reading.

This is not your typical selection. Though the disease discussed is depression, the treatment involves social networks, not sertraline. The article is well written, but it doesn’t appear in the pages of World Psychiatry but Wired. The article details therapy, but with a focus on apps, not Adler. CBT is important, but crowdsourcing is talked about more than cognitive distortions.

Welcome to psychiatry in the 21st century.

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