Quantitative Documentation of the Therapeutic Efficacy of Adolescent Telepsychiatry

The following is a case report of a 15-year-old adolescent who was evaluated and treated via telepsychiatry as part of an ongoing project at the University of Michigan Health System and the Hiawatha Community Mental Health Center in Michigan. In addition to clinical information, prospective quantitative data was collected at baseline, 6 weeks, and 3 months. Measures included the Youth Self Report (YSR), Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), Suicide Probability Scale (SPS), Reynold's Adolescent Depression Scale (RADS), Connor's Global Index—Parent Version (CGI-P), and the Children's Global Assessment Scale (CGAS). Prior to the telepsychiatry intervention, the patient was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder with psychosis. During the telepsychiatry intervention, the diagnosis was altered to a posttraumatic stress disorder; medications were discontinued and the patient improved. All scales showed reductions in severity of symptoms after the telepsychiatry interventions. This case represents the first application of adolescent telepsychiatry for the diagnosis, treatment, and tracking of clinical symptoms.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63270/1/153056203322502678.pd

Is There a Future for Depression Digital Motion Constructs in Psychiatry?

Psychomotor retardation has been recognized as a principal component of depression for centuries. Amongst symptoms and signs associated with depression, it is seen as having high predictive validity, correlating with severity of illness and the outcome of numerous therapeutic interventions. Of the two components—"psycho" and "motor"—the psychological component has received the most thorough investigation and has been given the greatest consideration. The "motor" (or motion) component has been given little consideration. A review of the literature suggests few studies have attempted to quantitatively characterize this phenomenon or use it as anything more than one indice among other signs and symptoms of depression. Unlike other phenomena associated with depression, the use of motion alterations has lagged in significance due to limited technology that would allow its study; depression has been seen predominantly as a "mood" disorder, with principal interest being in the "feelings" associated with the disorder. Recent advances in motion capture technologies allow motion alterations to be used for many purposes, both quantitative and qualitative. These sources of information appear to have direct and indirect impact. There is a fertile future for motion capture constructs in the study of depression, and recent technological advances will allow progress to occur in this area.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63233/1/109493101750527015.pd

Evolution of the Virtual Human: From Term to Potential Application in Psychiatry

Virtual reality applications in mental health have traditionally involved the creation of virtual environments that acted as provocative agents either for the purposes of the identification of disorders or their treatment. There is infrequent mention of the utilization of "virtual humans" despite the obvious significance of humans within our lives. More broadly, the term Virtual Human is frequently used in a number of contexts extending from its use as a term, modifying anything that needs to be modernized, to the application of 3D animated figures that exist in virtual realities. These applications refer to quite different phenomena in very different contexts leading to a high level of ambiguity and uncertainty when referring to virtual humans. In the following, the various applications of the term virtual human will be reviewed and critiqued through its most frequent applications, in various fields. They will be reviewed in an ascending manner from the least human of application to the most. Finally, a definition will be offered reflecting the potential complexity of the term as it reflects the expression of our most human factors, and how these are needed in the development of a model of a virtual human in psychiatry.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63235/1/10949310050078751.pd

On the co-orbital asteroids in the solar system: medium-term timescale analysis of the quasi-coplanar objects

The focus of this work is the current distribution of asteroids in co-orbital motion with Venus, Earth and Jupiter, under a quasi-coplanar configuration and for a medium-term timescale of the order of 900 years. A co-orbital trajectory is a heliocentric orbit trapped in a 1:1 mean-motion resonance with a given planet. As such, to model it this work considers the Restricted Three-Body Problem in the planar circular case with the help of averaging techniques. The domain of each co-orbital regime, that is, the quasi-satellite motion, the horseshoe motion and the tadpole motion, can be neatly defined by means of an integrable model and a simple two-dimensional map, that is invariant with respect to the mass parameter of the planet, and turns out to be a remarkable tool to investigate the distribution of the co-orbitals objects of interest. The study is based on the data corresponding to the ephemerides computed by the JPL Horizons system for asteroids with a sufficient low orbital inclination with respect to the Sun–planet orbital plane. These objects are cataloged according to their current dynamics, together with the transitions that occur in the given time frame from a given type of co-orbital motion to another. The results provide a general catalog of co-orbital asteroids in the solar system, the first one to our knowledge, and an efficient mean to study transitions