Radically different
For immediate release Stronger Together: A Path Towards a EU Mental Health Strategy For All This new policy brief warns that without governance, funding and accountability, three years of EU […]
The post Statement: Stronger Together: A Path Towards a EU Mental Health Strategy For All appeared first on Mental Health Europe.
Background: Depression is a pervasive global mental health issue, yet access to trained professionals remains severely limited. With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), digital tools are increasingly seen as a viable way to address this shortage. However, questions remain about how digital platforms for mental health care can be effectively designed. Objective: This study aimed to investigate, from an end user’s (patient’s) perspective, the potential use scenarios, desired features, and perceived risks of AI psychotherapists in depression treatment, providing design guidelines for their development. Methods: A grounded theory approach was applied to analyze qualitative responses from 452 individuals recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Data were collected through a scenario-based online survey on AI-assisted depression treatment administered between March 2023 and May 2023. Participants responded to 3 open-ended questions regarding the potential use of AI in treating depression, the characteristics expected from an AI psychotherapist, and the associated perceived risks, along with demographic, control, and contextual measures. The open-ended responses were inductively coded into themes, with intercoder reliability established (Cohen κ=0.80). In addition, variations in themes were further examined across participant profiles, including social stigma, current depression severity, trust in an AI psychotherapist, and privacy awareness. Results: Participants envisioned AI psychotherapists across 5 primary scenarios: diagnosis, treatment, consultation, self-management, and companionship. Key desired features include professionalism, warmth, precision care, empathy, remote services, active listener, personalization, flexible treatment options, patience, trustworthiness, and basic treatment alternative, while critical concerns include diagnostic inaccuracy, treatment errors, privacy breach, lack of human interaction, technical malfunctions, and lack of emotional engagement. Based on these findings, a general MoSCoW (must have, should have, could have, and won’t have) prioritization framework was proposed to serve as a conceptual starting point for future AI system design and empirical validation in mental health care. Notably, feature prioritization varied across user profiles: individuals with higher stigma placed greater emphasis on privacy protection, those with more severe depression prioritized precision care and timely access, low-trust users de-emphasized remote services, and privacy-sensitive individuals showed reduced preference for features requiring extensive data disclosure. These patterns highlight the need for context-sensitive design. Conclusions: This study provides a patient-centered framework for designing AI psychotherapists and complements the existing literature by highlighting the importance of balancing clinical effectiveness with relational considerations. The findings offer actionable guidelines for designing AI mental health care tools that are aligned with user expectations and sensitive to individual differences.
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A strategic imperative in mood disorders is to identify innovative mechanisms that translate into improved therapeutics when compared to the extant options. More specifically, there is a need for treatments with greater efficacy, shorter time-to-peak efficacy, greater durability of effect as well as improved tolerability profiles. Moreover, priority has also shifted towards identifying mood disorder therapeutics capable of targeting domains of psychopathology that are most pervasive, debilitating and inadequately treated by conventional pharmacology (e.g., anhedonia, cognitive impairment).
Background: Conversational agents (CAs) are increasingly used in mental health care to enhance access and engagement. However, their safe, ethical, and user-sensitive design remains a challenge. Despite growing attention to trauma-informed approaches in human-computer interaction, there is limited work on how the trauma-informed care (TIC) framework could be applied in the design of mental health CAs and no comprehensive synthesis to date. Objective: Guided by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s TIC framework, this scoping review explored how TIC principles (safety; trustworthiness and transparency; collaboration and mutuality; empowerment, voice, and choice; peer support; and cultural, historical, and gender issues) are currently represented in the design and evaluation of mental health conversational agents (MHCAs) and identified gaps and opportunities to promote more trauma-informed design practices. Methods: Online databases, as well as a secondary survey of citation lists from an initial search, were used to identify English-language journal articles and conference proceedings from 2000 to 2024 that empirically evaluated an independent, web- or app-based, unassisted CA used for mental health and included concepts from TIC. Results: Our analysis included 38 publications (n=28, 73.7%, published in 2020 or later) covering 28 distinct MHCAs. Most studies used experimental methods (n=23, 60.6%) or user studies (n=11, 28.9%), with samples skewed toward female (men: mean 34.92%, SD 18.64%), young in age (mean 32.52, SD 14.6 y), and predominantly nonclinical (n=29, 76.3%). MHCAs were largely rule-based prototypes. No studies explicitly referenced the TIC framework as a guiding lens for MHCA design or evaluation. A total of 26 studies referenced terminology from TIC core principles but rarely defined them, while all 38 included language that could be linked to one or more principles. Overall, TIC-related concepts appeared most often within intervention design descriptions, qualitative assessments, or as items embedded in questionnaires evaluating broader constructs. Trustworthiness and transparency, safety, empowerment, voice and choice, and collaboration and mutuality were comparatively well addressed, while peer support and cultural, historical, and gender issues were largely absent. Design recommendations, where present, were relatively broad and emphasized secure, customizable, reliable, human-like, and context-sensitive MHCAs that offered multimodal interaction, goal setting and tracking, and transparency. Conclusions: Studies did not self-identify as using Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s framework for TIC, making it more difficult to identify its elements. The fragmented terms, disciplines, and metrics used make it difficult to draw more systematic conclusions about the current research landscape related to TIC, but our analysis indicates TIC to be a descriptive and potentially unifying framework and provides a starting point for the explicit trauma-informed MHCA research and design.
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Background: Patient and public involvement is essential for developing patient-centered and acceptable eHealth interventions, yet little is known about how digital collaboration with patient representatives can best be implemented in psycho-oncological research. Objective: This study aimed to identify the benefits and barriers of digital collaboration in the development of an e-mental health application and provide recommendations to optimize digital collaboration with patient representatives in psycho-oncology research. Methods: Conducted from July to September 2023, this study involved digital semistructured interviews with 5 patient representatives from the Reduct trial, a multicenter randomized controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of the web-based psycho-oncological training Make It. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results: The findings highlighted multiple advantages of digital collaboration. These included significant reductions in travel costs and effort, personal acceptance and preference for digital methods, enhanced flexibility and accessibility, a reduced health burden, increased efficiency, and scalability. Conversely, several challenges were identified: social impacts or impediments due to less face-to-face interaction, technical difficulties, compromised effectiveness and quality of communication, diverse personal preferences and acceptance levels, organizational issues, cognitive demands, socioeconomic barriers, and safety concerns. The following recommendations to optimize digital collaboration were identified: maintaining regular communication and information exchange, valuing and committing to the collaboration, using diverse communication channels, ensuring comprehensible communication, integrating feedback, fostering openness and understanding, diligent documentation and recordkeeping, and providing targeted training and support for patient representatives. Conclusions: These findings confirm and specify previously known opportunities and challenges of digital collaboration, adding crucial insights for its implementation in psycho-oncological research. This research contributes to enhancing patient-centered approaches in psycho-oncology. Trial Registration: German Clinical Trials Register DRKS00025213; https://drks.de/search/en/trial/DRKS00025213
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In addition to suffering seizures, many people with epilepsy also experience bursts of abnormal brain activity called interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs). These can happen thousands of times a day and interfere with attention, memory, language, and sleep. New data from a study led by scientists at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) shows that these brain blips are not random events as once thought. The data shows that they unfold in a predictable pattern that can be detected before they occur, suggesting it may be possible to prevent them.
Details of their work are published in Nature Neuroscience in a paper titled “Laminar organization of cellular microcircuits modulating human interictal epileptiform discharges.” In it, the scientists explain that they used a high-resolution technology recently adapted for humans that records individual neuron activity to track more than 1000 neurons in four patients undergoing surgery for epilepsy. The so-called Neuropixel probes provide “a view into new ways we might address a debilitating aspect of epilepsy that we haven’t been able to tackle,” said Jon Kleen, MD, PhD, an associate professor of neurology at UCSF and co-senior author of the study.
Preventing brain blips would be a boon for patients’ quality of life because over time, the effects of these mental disruptions can be significant and may account for some of the cognitive impairment experienced by about half of people with epilepsy.
Neuropixels probes, which are thin devices lined with hundreds of sensors, are designed to record activity throughout the human cortex. This means that unlike current sensors which are limited to brain signals on the surface of the brain, Neuropixels can provide a three-dimensional view of brain activity. For the study, the scientists implanted the probes seven millimeters deep into the part of the brain where patients’ seizures originate—this is the tissue that surgeons typically remove to reduce epilepsy symptoms.
Inserting the probes here made it possible to observe what happened in the neurons before, during, and after each IED. While seizures appear as a burst of neurons firing in synchrony, when IEDs occur, they unfold sequentially. Specifically, one set of neurons was active about a second before the IED started followed by another set that generated the sharp electrical spike at its peak, and then a third set became active as the IED faded. “We could see individual neurons that were just microns apart from each other playing different roles in the process,” said Alex Silva, the study’s first author and a medical student and doctoral candidate in the UCSF-UC Berkeley Joint PhD program in bioengineering. “It was really striking.”
Previous studies have demonstrated that most neurons involved in IEDs are used in normal cognitive processing. According to this study, nearly 80% of the neurons involved in IEDs were also involved in language and perception. Current implantable devices for epilepsy may be able to help. They include closed loop neurostimulators that can detect abnormal brain activity and deliver electrical pulses that interrupt it. So in the case of IEDs, devices that monitor single neurons could use the activity of the first set of neurons announcing the arrival of the abnormal pattern as a warning signal. “That would be a major step forward, changing treatment from reactively responding to abnormal brain bursts to proactively preventing them in the first place,” Kleen said.
The post Advanced Neural Probes Reveal Predictable Patterns in Epileptic Brain Activity appeared first on GEN – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.
When people use the word dissociation, it can sound alarming. You may have seen it on social media, heard your child mention it, or noticed your child seeming “checked out” and wondered if that’s what’s happening. Dissociation can be confusing because it exists on a spectrum — from everyday experiences like daydreaming to more serious symptoms that may signal that a child is overwhelmed or struggling. The good news is that dissociation is often a temporary coping mechanism, and when it does become a problem, there are effective ways to help.
In simple terms, dissociation is a kind of mental disconnection. “When I think of dissociation, I think of there being some sort of disconnect between an individual and their sense of self, or a period of time that you later can’t recall, or feeling like you’re disconnected from your body,” says Lauren Allerhand, PsyD, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute and co-director of its DBT program.
Some kids describe dissociation as feeling spaced out, numb, or disconnected from their body or surroundings. Others say they feel like they’re watching themselves from outside their body, or that the world around them doesn’t feel real. “There’s some period of time where your normal sense of flow is disrupted,” Dr. Allerhand explains.
In its mildest form, dissociation is a commonplace occurrence. Kids might daydream in class, zone out during something boring like a long car trip, or feel detached when they are overwhelmed in some way. These experiences are usually not a cause for concern. “Our brains do a really good job of protecting ourselves,” Dr. Allerhand says. “Sometimes our brains develop strategies to protect us that are healthy, and other times they develop strategies that might work in short bursts but become less helpful if they happen too much.”
When dissociation happens often, or interferes with daily life, it may signal that a child is struggling with something more serious than ordinary, intermittent stress. “If it’s happening all the time, it’s less effective as a coping mechanism” because of the toll it can take when there is memory loss, confusion, and feeling disconnected to the self, she explains.
Children and teens may describe dissociation differently. Some say they feel:
“Kids might say they feel like a robot. Everything feels fake around them,” Dr. Allerhand says. “Younger children may not have the words to describe what they’re experiencing. Instead, parents might notice their child seems unusually quiet, unresponsive, or ‘not themselves.’”
Dissociation is often linked to stress or overwhelming emotions — kids may dissociate when they feel unable to cope with what’s happening around them. “This could be a response to any sort of highly intense emotion or experience,” Dr. Allerhand says, such as:
“It’s another way of coping with stress or trauma,” says Tanvi Bahuguna, PsyD, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute who specializes in trauma and mood disorders. “There’s this psychological process that helps them disconnect from overwhelming pain.” Some kids dissociate during panic attacks or periods of intense anxiety. Children who have experienced significant adversity may be more likely to dissociate. These experiences can include:
Still, experts are quick to note that dissociation doesn’t automatically mean a child has experienced trauma or has a serious disorder. “There are lots of exits on this highway before we’re at a dissociative disorder,” Dr. Allerhand says, adding that a full-blown dissociative disorder is very rare in children.
It can be hard to recognize when a child is experiencing more serious dissociation because it doesn’t always look different from daydreaming or inattention. One key difference is distress. “Spacing out or not paying attention is not often experienced as distressing,” Dr. Allerhand says. Moderate or serious dissociation “is often somewhat distressing.” Kids who are daydreaming are still connected to themselves and their surroundings; kids who are experiencing more serious dissociation may feel cut off from their body, emotions, or reality altogether.
If you think your child may be dissociating, the most important thing you can do is not panic or try to get your child to “snap out of it.” “The number one thing a parent can do is stay as calm as possible,” Dr. Bahuguna says. Speak gently, use short sentences, and reassure your child that they’re safe. Saying your child’s name and reminding them you’re there can help them reconnect.
Grounding techniques can also bring kids back into the present moment. One common method is called the 5-4-3-2-1 technique: Ask the child to name five things they can see, four things they can feel, three things they can hear, two things they can smell, one thing they can taste or imagine tasting. Other grounding strategies include:
If you find your child often dissociates, Dr. Allerhand recommends helping them make a plan for it. During a calm moment, talk with your child about what they find helpful. “I noticed that this is happening. How can I help you when this is happening?” she suggests asking. Having a plan in advance makes it easier to respond in the moment — and in the meantime, stay nearby and make sure your child is safe until the episode passes.
If dissociation is frequent, distressing, or associated with changes in your child’s functioning, seeking professional support is appropriate. “If something dissociative happens, and there’s a really big change in your child’s functioning, then I would be concerned,” Dr. Allerhand says.
Signs it may be time to reach out include:
A good place to start would be talking to your pediatrician, who may refer you to a mental health professional. “If your child is displaying behaviors that seem out of the ordinary, you should trust your instincts,” Dr. Allerhand says.
To determine whether a child is dissociating, a mental health professional gathers information from multiple sources, including parents, the child, and sometimes teachers, asking about the child’s behaviors, history, and any recent stressors or changes in behavior.
“The first thing would be a structured diagnostic interview with a qualified clinician,” Dr. Allerhand explains. “Parents bring the history and describe the behavior, and then the clinician meets with the child.” Clinicians also consider whether dissociation might be a symptom of another condition, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, anxiety (especially panic disorder), and depression.
“It’s really gathering history, meeting the child, observing the child, and figuring out what this cluster of behaviors leads to,” she says. It’s more frequent to find that dissociation is a result of another disorder than an actual dissociative disorder.
Treatment depends on what’s driving the dissociation. If trauma is involved, therapy may focus on helping the child process difficult experiences and build coping skills. Evidence-based approaches include trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR).
If anxiety or emotional overwhelm is the primary cause, treatment may focus on emotion regulation, grounding techniques, and identifying triggers and early warning signs. Therapy, such as dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), typically involves both children and parents, helping families recognize patterns and respond in supportive ways.
For more severe or persistent dissociation, treatment may happen in phases — beginning with safety and stabilization, then skill-building, and eventually, when appropriate, processing difficult experiences. “The goal is helping the child learn to cope with their experience and stay in their body,” Dr. Allerhand says.
In children and teens, dissociation is usually a symptom of another condition. But in cases of very serious early trauma, abuse, or neglect, it can progress into a full-blown disorder. There are a number of dissociative disorders, including:
These disorders sometimes attract media attention, but they are extremely rare in children. What’s important for parents to know is that if you see dissociative behavior in a child, it’s most likely a normal coping mechanism for a child experiencing some stress or intense emotion. If it persists, is causing distress, or is interfering with a child’s life, it’s time to consult a pediatrician or mental health professional. Identifying what might be causing the behavior is the first step to getting appropriate treatment.
Dissociation is a mental disconnection from your thoughts, feelings, body, or surroundings. Kids may feel spaced out, numb, or like they’re watching themselves from the outside, as if the world doesn’t feel real.
Common signs include feeling detached from the body, emotionally numb, or like you’re in a dream. Some kids seem unusually quiet or “not themselves,” while others have trouble recalling what happened during that time.
Dissociation is often a response to stress, anxiety, or overwhelming emotions. It can also be linked to trauma, major life changes (such as the sudden loss of a family member), or intense feelings the child doesn’t yet know how to manage.
Grounding techniques can help bring you back to the present moment, like naming what you see, hear, and feel, or focusing on breathing. Having a plan for what you will do the next time can make it easier to manage when it happens.
The post Dissociation: Signs and Causes in Children appeared first on Child Mind Institute.
Welcome to the 2026 State of Precision Medicine virtual summit, hosted by Inside Precision Medicine. This year’s summit focuses on the existing gaps in precision medicine as we ask: How do we make treatment equitable and accessible for all patients across the disease continuum?
On June 3rd, the editors of Inside Precision Medicine will feature an outstanding line-up of guests highlighting the challenges and urgency of expanding access to disease therapies and empowering patients and consumers.
Agenda Highlights:
Registration is entirely free. We look forward to seeing you on June 3.
Produced with support from:
