This week one of my fellow psychiatrists in San Francisco and one of my patients both suggested that I check out Kip Health, startup designed to improve collaboration between patients and their mental health providers. The App is in beta and so it is bound to change over time. For example, right now it is free for both mental health …
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Bipolar
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for bipolar may reduce anxiety and bolster emotional stability As with many psychiatric disorders, bipolar disorder isn’t impossible to treat but it has its own unique and unremitting way of seriously wearing down a patient’s resolve. Mindfulness based cognitive therapy (MBCT) for bipolar joins a handful of therapies that can help. A kind of yo-yoing of …
Mindfulness Apps Updated
Mindfulness Apps Updated We have updated our mindfulness links based on a nice review in the New York Times. The reviewer suggests starting with one of the two apps (both available on iPhone and android) that has a complete program for beginners – Calm or Headspace. We particularly liked the fact that the reviewer pointed to the very personal aspects …
Apps and Links Updated
I have just been a couple of hours updating the apps and links page on this site. There are a lot more choices for mood charting including many more that are available on both android and iPhone. I’ve also been using three different apps concurrently for the last two months to get a sense of what it’s like with different mood …
Self Affirmations by Songify
A good friend and colleague suggested a new technique for “self affirmations.” A technique which makes something that can seem ponderous, but is also a powerful technique for positive change, seem like a lot more fun… Self affirmations are things that you tell yourself about yourself and the world. In psychological terms, they are about reshaping our constant internal dialog through …
Mind Maps and Post Its
Stuck with a problem that you can’t figure out? Having trouble generating ideas? One of the things that the mind is very good at is coming up with potential pitfalls. And all of us have found ourselves trapped with recurring negative thoughts that make it hard to do any creative thinking. Sometimes changing the process or framework for thinking about …
Mindfulness Apps
Mindfulness apps have intrigued us for years. The New York Times recently two mindfulness apps. I was pleased to see that the ones they chose were the two apps that we find are the most popular these days: Headspace and Calm.com. I’ve updated the webpage that lists a number of apps and links that you may find helpful. But I thought …
App that Predicts Mania
There are smartphone apps for monitoring your diet, your drugs, even your heart. And now a Michigan psychiatrist, Melvin McInnis, is developing an app he hopes doctors will someday use to predict when a manic episode is imminent in patients with bipolar disorder. Manic episodes can come with a dangerous mix of increased energy and impaired judgment. “We want to be able to …
Internet Therapies Generate Interest
There is increasing interest in “apps” that can support mental health (one of our most enthusiastic readers recently posted a query on this topic on the forum). Apps are rarely intended to deliver “therapy” – they are usually not written by mental health professionals (although mental health professionals may be consulted along the way). Their goal is to be appealing …
Social Media Makes Moods Go Viral
Previously we reviewed evidence that the people we live with (family, neighbors, even the larger community of people in a metropolitan area) have an effect on our mood, so it is not surprising to learn of a recent study conducted by researchers from the University of California, Yale, and Facebook that found that moods can go viral, just like ideas and …
Apps for MoodSurfing
While you are waiting for the official MoodSurfing app, you might want to check out the recently updated “Links and Apps” page on this blog. There I write about other websites with useful information, but also about apps for Android and iPhone that can help you create calm by adding a mindfulness practice, or track your moods, so that you …
Looking for Volunteers Who Want to Get Better
One of my patients ran across this game and thought it might be of use. I went online and checked it out and it seems that it could be helpful, now I wonder if I could get one or more volunteers to try it out and report back to the group. If you are interested email me at peter@moodsurfing.com. Link …
Sleep Therapy and Depression
What would you do if you could double the effectiveness of your antidepressants? Let’s say that this new treatment also had no known side effects, and was completely safe. That is what four studies have suggested could happen if people who were started on antidepressants received cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTi). However, this treatment is not widely available. We …
Cognition Enhancing Apps
An experimental computer program is associated with improved attention and working memory in people over age 60, even 6 months after training. Somewhat fuzzy-brained after a poor night of sleep I ran across this summary of a paper that was just published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature (Anguera JA et al., Nature 2013 Sep 5; 501:97). Where could I test drive this application, …
Online Resources: Links and Apps Update
The very useful listserve of the Northern California Cognitive Behavioral Therapy association has had a great thread about favorite apps for mental health. We took advantage of the opportunity to update the page entitled “Links and Apps” with some more options. Here is an unedited list of the favorites from that group… note that this list is heavy on iPhone …
MoodRhythm: Beta Users Needed
One of our readers forwarded to us a story about a new application called MoodRhythm that was developed at Cornell University and won the prestigious $100,000 Heritage Open mHealth Challenge. The full story is available here. The application, which is available as a beta, is available for both iPhones and Android smartphones (although how to download it may be a bit …
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