A decade into Facebook: where is psychiatry in the digital age?

Social networking sites are a part of everyday life for over a billion people worldwide. They show no sign of declining popularity, with social media use increasing at 3 times the rate of other Internet use. Despite this proliferation, mental healthcare has yet to embrace this unprecedented resource. We argue that social networking site data should become a high priority for psychiatry research and mental healthcare delivery. We illustrate our views using the world’s largest social networking site, Facebook, which currently has over 1 billion daily users (1 in 7 people worldwide). Facebook users can create personal profiles, socialize, express feelings, and share content, which Facebook stores as time-stamped digital records dating back to when the user first joined. Evidence suggests that 92% of adolescents go online daily and disclose considerably more about themselves online than offline. Thus, working with Facebook data could further our understanding of the onset and early years of mental illness, a crucial period of interpersonal development. Furthermore, a diminishing ‘digital divide’ has allowed for a broader sociodemographic to access Facebook, including homeless youth, young veterans, immigrants, patients with mental health problems, and seniors, enabling greater contact with traditionally harder-to-reach populations

Online Social Networking Sites and Mental Health Research

Socializing and networking was transformed in the technological era by the introduction of social networking sites (SNSs). These online sites contain an abundance of information about individual preferences, interests, types, and frequency of social interactions, etc. However, scientific studies that have utilized SNS activity data to aid our understanding of mental health disorders are scarce. This is partly due to the practicalities of accessing SNS data and methodological issues of large-scale data collection, but also because the construct validity of SNS measures is unknown. By and large, the literature to date has attempted to link various SNSs measures to various mental health symptomologies, mostly collected using self-report measures rather than data generated by SNSs. Although such research has demonstrated some preliminary and putative associations between SNS activity and mental health measures, the current literature is still in its infancy and arguably lacks rigor in design, offering limited insights into its theoretical significance and plausibility. In this review, we will provide an account of the theoretical importance of using data generated from SNSs in mental health research and provide a brief overview of the literature published in this area to date

Neural correlates of the inverse base rate effect

The inverse base rate effect (IBRE) is a nonrational behavioral phenomenon in predictive learning. Canonically, participants learn that the AB stimulus compound leads to one outcome and that AC leads to another outcome, with AB being presented three times as often as AC. When subsequently presented with BC, the outcome associated with AC is preferentially selected, in opposition to the underlying base rates of the outcomes. The current leading explanation is based on error-driven learning. A key component of this account is prediction error, a concept previously linked to a number of brain areas including the anterior cingulate, the striatum, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The present work is the first fMRI study to directly examine the IBRE. Activations were noted in brain areas linked to prediction error, including the caudate body, the anterior cingulate, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Analyzing the difference in activations for singular key stimuli (B and C), as well as frequency matched controls, supports the predictions made by the error-driven learning account

Beyond mobile apps: a survey of technologies for mental well-being

Mental health problems are on the rise globally and strain national health systems worldwide. Mental disorders are closely associated with fear of stigma, structural barriers such as financial burden, and lack of available services and resources which often prohibit the delivery of frequent clinical advice and monitoring. Technologies for mental well-being exhibit a range of attractive properties, which facilitate the delivery of state-of-the-art clinical monitoring. This review article provides an overview of traditional techniques followed by their technological alternatives, sensing devices, behaviour changing tools, and feedback interfaces. The challenges presented by these technologies are then discussed with data collection, privacy, and battery life being some of the key issues which need to be carefully considered for the successful deployment of mental health toolkits. Finally, the opportunities this growing research area presents are discussed including the use of portable tangible interfaces combining sensing and feedback technologies. Capitalising on the data these ubiquitous devices can record, state of the art machine learning algorithms can lead to the development of robust clinical decision support tools towards diagnosis and improvement of mental well-being delivery in real-time

The impact of the Great Exhibition of 1851 on the development of technical education during the second half of the nineteenth century

This paper examines the contribution made by the mechanics’ institute movement in Britain just prior to, and following, the opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. It argues that far from making little contribution to education, as often portrayed by historians, the movement was ideally positioned to respond to the findings of the Exhibition, which were that foreign goods on display were often more advanced than those produced in Britain. The paper highlights, through a regional study, how well suited mechanics’ institutes were in organising their own exhibitions, providing the idea of this first international exhibition. Subsequently, many offered nationally recognised technical subject examinations through relevant education as well as informing government commissions, prior to the passing of the Technical Instruction Acts in 1889 and the Local Taxation Act of 1890. These acts effectively put mechanics’ institutes into state ownership as the first step in developing further education for all in Britai

Master planned estates : parish or panacea?

Master planned estates in Australia emerge from two major directions: one aims to address the inadequacies of 1970s suburbanisation and the other comes from governments and developers seeking to realise alternatives. The very idea of master planning has a longer history, one that arguably dates back to 19th-century Utopian Socialism and Baron Haussmann\u27s redesign of Paris, which involved a large-scale, comprehensive alternative vision realised by a sanctioned authority. Master planning thereby partakes of both utopianism and authoritarianism. These associations have infused the discussion and construction of Australian master planned estates rendering them both pariah and panacea. But research and my own experience suggests that they are far more panaceas than pariahs

Lithium and GSK3-β promoter gene variants influence white matter microstructure in bipolar disorder

Lithium is the mainstay for the treatment of bipolar disorder (BD) and inhibits glycogen synthase kinase 3-β (GSK3-β). The less active GSK3-β promoter gene variants have been associated with less detrimental clinical features of BD. GSK3-β gene variants and lithium can influence brain gray matter structure in psychiatric conditions. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measures of white matter (WM) integrity showed widespred disruption of WM structure in BD. In a sample of 70 patients affected by a major depressive episode in course of BD, we investigated the effect of ongoing long-term lithium treatment and GSK3-β promoter rs334558 polymorphism on WM microstructure, using DTI and tract-based spatial statistics with threshold-free cluster enhancement. We report that the less active GSK3-β rs334558*C gene-promoter variants, and the long-term administration of the GSK3-β inhibitor lithium, were associated with increases of DTI measures of axial diffusivity (AD) in several WM fiber tracts, including corpus callosum, forceps major, anterior and posterior cingulum bundle (bilaterally including its hippocampal part), left superior and inferior longitudinal fasciculus, left inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, left posterior thalamic radiation, bilateral superior and posterior corona radiata, and bilateral corticospinal tract. AD reflects the integrity of axons and myelin sheaths. We suggest that GSK3-β inhibition and lithium could counteract the detrimental influences of BD on WM structure, with specific benefits resulting from effects on specific WM tracts contributing to the functional integrity of the brain and involving interhemispheric, limbic, and large frontal, parietal, and fronto-occipital connections

Patents and Industrialisation. An Historical Overview of the British Case, 1624-1907

A Report to the Strategic Advisory Board on Intellectual Property Policy (SABIP), U