Mental Health Technology - What the Future Holds

 Medicine  

Technology is changing how people view and treat mental health disorders. With new sensors and data management tools, Silicon Valley is changing the face of mental health diagnostics.

D
iagnosing mental health disorders used to be gut-level. Clinicians shoveled deep into the minds of patients, and then filtered the responses through the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The accuracy of diagnoses was often proportional to the experience of the clinician, so pay for the best!

"Just as software bugs are often the cause of our computer problems, our mental motherboards can be done in by our psychological processing."

Now, Silicon Valley is changing the face of mental health diagnostics. Complex disorders are being reduced, diagnosed and treated as chemical imbalances and mechanical maladjustments. Kirsten Weir, writing for the June 2012 Monitor of Psychology, says, “Just as software bugs are often the cause of our computer problems, our mental motherboards can be done in by our psychological processing.” More and more, technology is changing how people view and treat mental health disorders.

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Skin Conductance Wristbands – Autism, Depression

The human wrist is a synopsis of the body’s internal cogworks. Wristband monitors can check heart rate, body temperature, macro-movement and skin conductance, sort of like mood rings. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wound wristbands on autistic children and discovered that a child’s outer actions may not accurately reflect his internal state. Scientists hope that these wristbands, or even sensor-equipped smartphones, will help explain autistic behavior, identify depression triggers, and report anxiety attacks.

Brain Positron Emission Tomography (PET) – Alzheimer’s, Schizophrenia

The PET process is simple: A glucose doppelganger, called a radiotracer, is injected into the bloodstream. As it travels, it emits positrons, like the beeps of a pager, which are picked up by a computer. The computer generates a 2D image of neurological metabolic activity. Currently, PET is used to diagnose and distinguish between Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Physicians hope that PET will one day explore changes in neural activity in patients afflicted by schizophrenia.

Self-Learning MRI Database – Behavioral Development

During 2001 through 2007, the National Institute of Health (NIH) collected MRI data on more than 500 children at physiological milestones in their lives. The NIH released the data goldmine to qualified pediatricians under the simple idea: If physicians can see a good brain, they can recognize a bad brain. Judith Ramsey of the National Institute of Mental Health says, “Differences between boys and girls and relationships to cognitive and behavioral development can be used to understand individual differences or normal variability.”

Our mental health is becoming a hot button issue with the emergency of understanding of the human mind. The age of the pen and paper questionnaire is passing. Mental health will be much less mental; intuition will be replaced by sensors, ECUs – and maybe even wristbands. Progression in science and technology will help us unlock the secrets of the mind and with help from these sources we can have a better understanding of what our minds can do.

Information Credit: Mindset Consulting Group

By Meghan Belnap

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