Blog posts tagged wsj

Mindsite is excited to officially launch our online mental health self-assessment at Health 2.0, April 22nd and 23rd in Boston.  After a few months of testing, V3 of our website is finally out of beta and we'll be showing off our demo there first!  Shoot a note to deraker AT mindsite DOT com if you are in the neighborhood or if you are going to be at the conference.

The title of the conference this year - Health 2.0 meets Ix - is a fitting summary for what we are doing at Mindsite and perhaps even more so for the field of mental health.  Ix, a play on Rx which is shorthand for prescription, was coined by the Center for Information Therapy.  Laura Landro at the WSJ recently included a great summary in her recent article, Online Records Get Patients Involved in Care, where she notes:

Large managed-care groups like Kaiser Permanente and Group Health Cooperative are increasingly using electronic medical-record systems to help solve the age-old problem of getting patients to take better care of themselves. The trend, known as information therapy, involves delivering reliable health information directly to patients to help them manage their conditions and make treatment choices. Health plans also are offering online self-management programs and virtual coaching sessions for a wide range of health issues.

"Information therapy can help bridge the transition from [doctors] doing things to and for people, to helping them become active participants in their own care," says Paul Wallace, medical director of health and productivity management programs at Kaiser and a director of the nonprofit Center for Information Therapy, which promotes providing patients with information as part of the process of medical care.

Why is Information Therapy a particularly apt metaphor in the field of mental health?  Unlike other areas in health care, mental health is the only field where diagnoses and treatments (at least non-medication focused psychotherapy approaches, such as modern cognitive behavioral therapy) are wholly based on the transfer of information, verbally, between patient and provider.  So we ask, was Sigmund Freud an early proponent of a more literal interpretation of information therapy?  How much further can the mental health vertical be pushed in online health care due to its lack of physical dependence?

The mental health space is a vast area of subject matter, often with controversial boundaries surrounding what constitutes a mental health issue or problem. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal written by Melinda Beck takes on the subject of alcohol consumption post New Years. Melinda summarizes the DSM-IV definition of alcohol abuse and dependence below.

The authoritative American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV, separates alcohol abuse from alcohol dependence, based partly on the problems the drinking causes. You qualify for a diagnosis of "abuse" if you've done any one of these in the past year: drunk alcohol in hazardous situations, like driving; kept drinking despite social or interpersonal problems; had legal problems related to alcohol or failed to fulfill major obligations at work, school or home because of drinking.

You've moved on to "dependence" if you've done any three of these seven: drunk more or longer than you intended; been unable to cut down or stop; needed more alcohol to get the same effect; had withdrawal symptoms without it; spent more time drinking or recovering; neglected other activities or continued to drink despite psychological or physical problems.

If you are interested in checking out more substance abuse related content in the DSM-IV, you can do so with the full text from Mindsite on dependence as well as abuse. Alcohol specific sections are found here.