In 2018, California's state government began rolling out a new "mental health" initiative. The tech companies of Silicon Valley were creating smartphone apps that could prompt users to seek mental health care, and the state wanted to provide support. After all, researchers claim that more than half of Americans with mental health problems don't receive treatment, and one reason for that might be that treatment is expensive or unavailable in certain regions. Of the thousands of mental health apps in existence today, the state selected two. The first app is called 7 Cups, by a company called 7 Cups of Tea. They're focused on connecting mental health service users, in text-based chat sessions, with what they call "listeners"--volunteers who are trained in "active listening." But, according to The New York Times, the company has been plagued with issues, including listeners having inappropriate conversations with their clients and investigations of its alleged financial misconduct. The other company partnering with the state of California is Mindstrong Health. Their app (branded Mindstrong on March 17, 2020, previously known as Health) is available on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. However, you can only use the app if you have been given a code to participate by one of the health insurance companies they've partnered with. The company won't tell you which companies they work with--it's by invitation only.

In 2018, California's state government began rolling out a new "mental health" initiative. The tech companies of Silicon Valley were creating smartphone apps that could prompt users to seek mental health care, and the state wanted to provide support. After all, researchers claim that more than half of Americans with mental health problems don't receive treatment, and one reason for that might be that treatment is expensive or unavailable in certain regions. Of the thousands of mental health apps in existence today, the state selected two. The first app is called 7 Cups, by a company called 7 Cups of Tea. They're focused on connecting mental health service users, in text-based chat sessions, with what they call "listeners"--volunteers who are trained in "active listening." But, according to The New York Times, the company has been plagued with issues, including listeners having inappropriate conversations with their clients and investigations of its alleged financial misconduct. The other company partnering with the state of California is Mindstrong Health. Their app (branded Mindstrong on March 17, 2020, previously known as Health) is available on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. However, you can only use the app if you have been given a code to participate by one of the health insurance companies they've partnered with. The company won't tell you which companies they work with--it's by invitation only.

There are about 45 million people in the US alone with a mental illness, and those illnesses and their courses of treatment can vary tremendously. But there is something most of those people have in common: a smartphone. A startup founded in Palo Alto, California, by a trio of doctors, including the former director of the US National Institute of Mental Health, is trying to prove that our obsession with the technology in our pockets can help treat some of today's most intractable medical problems: depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse. Mindstrong Health is using a smartphone app to collect measures of people's cognition and emotional health as indicated by how they use their phones. Once a patient installs Mindstrong's app, it monitors things like the way the person types, taps, and scrolls while using other apps.

"It is with extraordinary sadness we can confirm the death of our friend and colleague, Anthony Bourdain," CNN said in a statement Friday morning. Christian De Rocquigny du Fayel, a prosecutor in the town of Colmar, confirmed Bourdain's death and said local law enforcement is investigating. 'At this stage nothing suggests the involvement of a third party,' the prosecutor said, adding that'a doctor at the scene' had confirmed Bourdin's death by hanging. Bourdain's death, coming days after the suicide of designer Kate Spade, brings to the forefront the complex issue of depression and how Artificial Intelligence can prevent these tragic decisions. A few years ago, a team of Harvard researchers developed the Beiwe platform, which attempted to leverage mobile phone technology and data science to offer medicine a wealth of additional information on disease digital phenotypes, including those of depression.

The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder include uncontrolled memories of a traumatic event, anxiety and panic--"hyperarousal" is the technical term--depression, avoiding anything that's a reminder of the event, self-destructive behavior, and more. It's the only psychiatric disorder where people are pretty sure of the cause: emotionally traumatic events, from the death of a loved one to an experience of fear or violence. By some estimates 5 to 10 percent of all US adults have PTSD, more women than men. Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places US troops are deployed put those numbers even higher among people in the military and veterans. But the biology of PTSD--neurological changes, elevated or depressed levels of something a blood test could pick up, genetic vulnerabilities--is … multifactorial.

The state of mental healthcare in the US is in crisis. Suicide is the second leading cause of death in the US, and at a 30-year high. Anxiety and depression are literally killing us. Part of the problem is the stigma attached to seeking help for emotional problems, part of it is providing options to those incapable of reaching out, or unwilling to. To address these issues, we must take them seriously.