Brenda K. Wiederhold

Augmenting Behavioral Healthcare: Mobilizing Services with Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

From tools for hunting and harvesting and monumental inventions of the industrial revolution that have propelled us into today’s ubiquitous information-age, innovative technologies and technological applications have transformed human-based experience. Abounding seemingly overnight, advanced technological applications have revolutionized the healthcare industry by mobilizing treatment and intervention services. While the advent of technologically driven mobile healthcare may appear to some as an emerging field, researchers, clinicians, and practitioners have been implementing contemporary technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), into their mental healthcare practices for over two decades. Clinically validated treatments for anxiety, phobias, pain distraction, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), stress management and prevention, and rehabilitation are only a handful of ways that this immersive technology transforms behavioral healthcare. Via immersive environments, clinicians are better able to expose patients to feared stimuli than traditional imaginal techniques, providing greater effectiveness in treatments and significant improvements in patients’ overall wellbeing. Additionally, the mobilization of healthcare to smartphones and other devices facilitates the migration of services beyond the walls of the traditional doctor’s office and into the homes and everyday lives of those who need it most. Ultimately, innovative applications by researchers, clinicians, and practitioners prove VR and augmented reality (AR) technologies as effective, efficient, and widely accessible tools in mental healthcare interventions.

The Psychology of Social Networking Vol.1. Personal Experience in Online Communities

The Internet provides a popular and convenient source of information and support on parenting, offering many opportunities for both peer and professional support. Recent studies have also shown that both parents and children can benefit from online parenting support. In this chapter, we describe the current variety of online services for parents, distinguishing between peer support and professional support. Specifically we will focus on the design characteristics of these web-based resources. Since Internet technology is still rapidly developing, many new opportunities for social networking are available. The provision of multilayered interaction (many-to-many, one-tomany, one-to-one) and the use of multiple components in websites may enhance the way parents feel supported. Also, training can be added to online programs, which aims to change parental knowledge, behavior and attitude. Furthermore, we discuss experimental results from recent meta-analytic study on the effects of online parental education. Providing an overview of the past decade, we discuss two major trends which give direction to future research and development: missing aspects of research on online social networking and inspiring opportunities for online professional support for parents.The Internet provides a popular and convenient source of information and support on parenting, offering many opportunities for both peer and professional support. Recent studies have also shown that both parents and children can benefit from online parenting support. In this chapter, we describe the current variety of online services for parents, distinguishing between peer support and professional support. Specifically we will focus on the design characteristics of these web-based resources. Since Internet technology is still rapidly developing, many new opportunities for social networking are available. The provision of multilayered interaction (many-to-many, one-tomany, one-to-one) and the use of multiple components in websites may enhance the way parents feel supported. Also, training can be added to online programs, which aims to change parental knowledge, behavior and attitude. Furthermore, we discuss experimental results from recent meta-analytic study on the effects of online parental education. Providing an overview of the past decade, we discuss two major trends which give direction to future research and development: missing aspects of research on online social networking and inspiring opportunities for online professional support for parents.

The Psychology of Social Networking Vol.2. Identity and Relationships in Online Communities

The Internet allows people to freely navigate through news and use that information to reinforce or support their own beliefs in, for example, different social networks. In this chapter we suggest that the representation of current predominant views in the news can be seen as collective expressions within a society. Seeing that the notion of what makes individuals happy has been of increasing interest in recent decades, we analyze the word happiness in online news. We first present research on the co-occurrence of the word happiness with other words in online newspapers. Among other findings, words representing people (e.g., “mom”, “grandmother”, “you”/”me”, “us”/”them”) often appear with the word happiness. Words like “iPhone”, “millions” and “Google” on the other hand, almost never appear with the word happiness. Secondly, using words with predefined sets of psycholinguistic characteristics (i.e., word-norms measuring social relationships, money, and material things) we further examine differences between sets of articles including the word happiness and a random set of articles not including this word. The results revealed that the “happy” dataset was significantly related to social relationships word-norm, while the “neutral” dataset was related to the money word-norm. However, the “happy” dataset was also related to the material things word-norm. In sum, there is a relatively coherent understanding among members of a society concerning what makes us happy: relationships, not money; meanwhile there is a more complex relationship when it comes to material things. The semantic method used here, which is particularly suitable for analyzing large amounts of data, seems to be able to quantify collective ideas in online news that might be expressed through different social networks.

Mental Health Consequences of War Conflicts

Modern war conflicts, evolutionizing from large-scale collisions of armed forces to local, low-intensity, surrogate, terroristic and information wars, are associated with less direct mortality but with growing and long-lasting mental health consequences. These consequences can be traced in not only combatants and other military contingents and veterans but even to greater extent in the civilian populations, given that many modern war conflicts have signs of civil wars or religious conflicts. While active duty military undergo preliminary selection and resilience training, civilians in the war zone or as refugees and asylum-seeking victims are even at higher risk with the greater probability of transgenerational transmission, which implies long-lasting (decades) effects. Both military and civilians suffer from a similar set of disorders and psychological consequences caused by extreme trauma, including PTSD, depression, anxiety, addictions, somatization with chronic pain, dissociation, psychosocial dysfunctions, suicidal behavior, etc. War conflicts, terroristic acts, and information wars, amplified by technologically developing mass media, the internet and social networks, seem to add to a general feeling of instability and promote more anxiety, covering even wider contingents worldwide. Military psychiatry has accumulated knowledge and practical experience that, though not always can be applied directly, are useful for identification, management, prevention, and treatment of mental health consequences of war in wider contingents. This knowledge is a one more relevant and strong reason for advocating lowering of international tension and reducing the probability of war conflicts worldwide for the sake of preserving mental health of the humanity. It also has a potential of lowering the burden of this type of diseases worldwide.

Physician burnout: Improving treatment efficacy with virtual reality

Creating a significant negative impact on both their quality of life and the quality of patient care with an evident economical burden for the healthcare system, there is a growing concern over physician burnout. The range of interventions and treatments that have been used to address this problem, however, appear quite fragmented and lack compelling efficacy. We describe the main factors known to contribute to the development of physician burnout as well as currently available treatments. Studies seem to indicate that both specialisation area as well as personality traits may contribute to the manifestation. The highest risk specialties appear to be critical care physicians, emergency physicians, oncologists and internal medicine physicians, while the highest risk personality attributes are high neuroticism, low agreeableness, introversion, and negative affectivity. In addition, being exceedingly enthusiastic about ones work and having high aspirations at work, with an idealistic approach, also serve as factors which contribute to increased risk of burnout, and in particular for those who are new to the occupation.

Cybertherapy in Medicine – Experience at the Universidad Panamericana, IMSS and ISSSTE Mexico

© 2012 Mosso et al., licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Cybertherapy in Medicine – Experience at the Universidad Panamericana, IMSS and ISSSTE Mexico

Identification Based On Fusion of Cardiovascular Function Measurements

Recent investigations indicate cardiovascular function is a viable biometric. This paper explores biometric techniques based on multiple modalities for sensing cardiovascular function. Analysis of data acquired with an electrocardiogram (ECG) combined with corresponding data from pulse oximetry and blood pressure indicates that features can be extracted from the signals, which correspond to individuals. While a persons heart rate can vary with mental and emotional state, certain features corresponding to the heartbeat appear to be unique to the individual. Our protocol induced a range of mental and emotional states in the subject and the analysis identifies features of the cardiovascular signals that are invariant to mental and emotional state. Furthermore, the three measures of cardiovascular function provide independent information, which can be fused to achieve robust performance compared to a single modality.

Multi-Center Study for the Treatment of Panic Disorders with Agoraphobia

In accordance with the standards outlined by American Psychiatric Association in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (APA, 1994), the essential feature of panic disorder (PD) is the occurrence of panic attacks. A panic attack is a sudden onset period of intense fear or discomfort associated with a cluster of physical and cognitive symptoms, which occurs unexpectedly and recurrently, such as pervasive apprehension about panic attacks, persistent worry about future attacks, worry about the perceived physical, social or mental consequences of attacks, or major changes in behavior in response to attacks. The disorder is often associated with circumscribed phobic disorders such as specific phobias, social phobias, and especially with agoraphobia (Goisman et al., 1994; Sanderson et al., 1990).