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During the 2003 SARS outbreak, health care workers had concerns about infecting others and experienced stigma because they were in close contact with sick patients. A new study in JAMA looked at the mental health of 1,257 health care workers attending to COVID-19 patients in China since COVID-19 is our current concern. A large percentage reported depression, anxiety, insomnia, and distress. Findings suggest that these health care workers are at a significant risk of developing mental illness. [More]

Meena, featured on Google’s AI blog, is a chatbot trained in a conversational model. The concept is that it conducts conversations that are more sensible and specific than existing chatbots. This chatbot, trained with 2.6 billion parameters, is designed to offer more humanlike conversations. [More]

According to a human rights experts that performed psychological evaluations with immigrants, they stated that separation of families by immigration officials amounts to torture. In an investigation, “You Will Never See Your Child Again: The Persistent Psychological Effects of Family Separation,” Physicians for Human rights evaluated 17 adults and nine children from Central America who had been separated between 60 and 69 days. [More]

A new report by RAND showed that Los Angeles county could potentially divert up to two-thirds of their mentally ill inmates out of jails and into community-based treatment services. Diversion programs benefit individuals by giving them patient centered care while easing the burden on the jail system. But an increase in people with serious mental illness in the criminal justice system and the shortage of beds in outside mental health facilities make this a tough transition. [More]

In a new study, researchers examined beliefs about whether political and marketing campaigns use psychology to influence people’s behaviors. Although the goal of marketing strategies is to persuade people towards specific choices, the researchers suggest people from the study don't believe these techniques actually work. [More]

In a recent Cigna survey, almost half of the respondents reported feeling lonely “always” or “sometimes”. One hypothesis drawn from the research is that these feelings of loneliness are generated partly by inflammation and previous research indicates inflammation impacts our thinking and behaviors. [More]

Some faiths are more advanced in their approach to mental illness than others. In a previous article, I highlighted the work of the Presbyterian church and invited experts to comment on the role of churches in addressing mental illness. Adventists are another faith community that set an example for how congregations care for their mentally ill members. [More]

The top two mental health barriers for members, church leaders, and mid-council leaders were “not knowing how to respond to an individual showing signs of a mental health condition” and “lack of knowledge about mental health issues.” These responses are not uncommon in faith communities as many do not know how to respond to mental illness, both from a lack of knowledge and misperceptions. [More]

We're in a volatile political climate in the United States and are heading into what will be an interesting election. Whether it’s a twitter storm or fake news, there’s plenty of ammunition for social media fights over political beliefs. And recent research found that general social media use has a negative effect on political knowledge, which may only fuel the fire in upcoming months. [More]

Dopamine fasting encourages people to avoid stimulation to become better versions of themselves. Dr. Cameron Sepah describes it as “an evidence-based technique to manage addictive behaviors, by restricting them to specific periods of time, and practicing fasting from impulsively engaging in them, in order to regain behavioral flexibility.” [More]