What happens to your body during a panic attack? 'Just breathe' is more than just a nice saying. Up to one third of people experience at least one panic attack in their lifetimes. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. It happens all at once--your heartbeat becomes a jackhammer, your body closes in on you like a corset.

Panic attacks are acute episodes of fear and distress, in which timely, appropriate intervention can significantly help individuals regain stability. However, suitable datasets for training such models remain scarce due to ethical and logistical issues. To address this, we introduce PACE, which is a dataset that includes high-distress episodes constructed from first-person narratives, and structured around the principles of Psychological First Aid (PFA). Using this data, we train PACER, a counseling model designed to provide both empathetic and directive support, which is optimized through supervised learning and simulated preference alignment. To assess its effectiveness, we propose PanicEval, a multi-dimensional framework covering general counseling quality and crisis-specific strategies. Experimental results show that PACER outperforms strong baselines in both counselor-side metrics and client affect improvement. Human evaluations further confirm its practical value, with PACER consistently preferred over general, CBT-based, and GPT-4-powered models in panic scenarios (Code is available at https://github.com/JihyunLee1/PanicToCalm ).

The copilot framework, which aims to enhance and tailor large language models (LLMs) for specific complex tasks without requiring fine-tuning, is gaining increasing attention from the community. In this paper, we introduce the construction of a Healthcare Copilot designed for medical consultation. The proposed Healthcare Copilot comprises three main components: 1) the Dialogue component, responsible for effective and safe patient interactions; 2) the Memory component, storing both current conversation data and historical patient information; and 3) the Processing component, summarizing the entire dialogue and generating reports. To evaluate the proposed Healthcare Copilot, we implement an auto-evaluation scheme using ChatGPT for two roles: as a virtual patient engaging in dialogue with the copilot, and as an evaluator to assess the quality of the dialogue. Extensive results demonstrate that the proposed Healthcare Copilot significantly enhances the capabilities of general LLMs for medical consultations in terms of inquiry capability, conversational fluency, response accuracy, and safety. Furthermore, we conduct ablation studies to highlight the contribution of each individual module in the Healthcare Copilot. Code will be made publicly available on GitHub.

Mental health is a critical component of overall wellbeing, and many individuals struggle with various mental health issues, ranging from anxiety and depression to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and personality disorders. While therapy can be incredibly beneficial for those seeking support, the time between sessions can be difficult, and many individuals may require additional support and validation during this time. In recent years, technology has provided new opportunities to bridge the gap between therapy sessions and offer support to individuals struggling with mental health issues. One such technology is the development of chatbots, which have become increasingly popular as a tool for providing mental health support. Chatbots have been used for a variety of purposes, including screening for mental health issues, providing psychoeducation, and even serving as a virtual therapist.

Thorpe Park has a new attraction based on the Netflix series Black Mirror – and it's so horribly creepy and panic-inducing that I had to escape through the fire exit. Black Mirror: Labyrinth is an entirely new adventure that puts the park's visitors at the centre of the action – but there are enough nasty surprises to give grandma a heart attack. I'm a huge fan of Charlie Brooker's sci-fi anthology series, which explores a twisted alternate reality in the near-future where technology and'humanity's darkest instincts collide'. But the fun of watching an episode of Black Mirror is that all the nasty stuff is happening to someone else – you're just a witness to it. With Labyrinth, you become the unfortunate victim to the antagonist – in this case, an evil artificial intelligence (AI) system that harvests all your personal data.

NEW DELHI: A senior executive at a leading IT services company recently approached Sairee Chahal, founder of women career services portal SHEROES, to explore job options. The executive was worried there could be bad news for her at work. A patient of Samir Parikh at the department of mental health and behavioural sciences at Fortis Healthcare in New Delhi lost his job about two months ago. Along with the job, the patient lost complete self-confidence to face interviews. He used to get panic attacks and palpitations hours before an interview.

Om hundred'aar er alting glemt Had it not been for the fact that I do not speak Danish, I would have been invited to be the ke... Leadership, zenga zenga and the blockchain Zenga zenga-kibinimat When I studied HR at the Secretary's Academy in Montreal, I also took a 2 minute online course about chang... Zenga zenga-kibinimat When I studied HR at the Secretary's Academy in Montreal, I also took a 2 minute online course about chang...

Is fear all in the mind? Experiments on twins who can't feel fear are suggesting that some emotions are experienced only after we become aware of changes to our body. Many studies have shown that the amygdalae – two almond-shaped regions near the centre of the brain – are crucial for feeling fear. People who have lost their amygdalae through brain injury or disease also lose the ability to feel fear. In 2013, Justin Feinstein at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and his colleagues managed to scare three "fearless" people – two female identical twins and a woman known as S.M., none of whom have amygdalae – by getting them to inhale carbon dioxide, making them choke.