Telehealth Monitoring of Patients with Schizophrenia and Suicidal Ideation

A telehealth system was developed to monitor risk following hospitalization for suicidal ideation. We hypothesized that 3 months of telehealth monitoring will result in a greater reduction in suicidal ideation. Veterans with schizophrenia admitted with recent suicidal ideation and/or a suicidal attempt were recruited into a discharge program of VA Usual Care with daily Health Buddy© monitoring (HB) or Usual Care (UC) alone. Fifteen of 25 were randomized to HB and 10 received UC. Daily adherence in the use of the HB system during months 1–3 was, respectively, 86.9%, 86.3%, and 84.1%. There were significant improvements in Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation scores in HB participants. There were no changes in depressive symptoms. Telehealth monitoring for this population of patients appears to be feasible.     

Artificial intelligence,language, and the study of knowledge

This paper studies the relationship of Artificial Intelligence to the study of language and the representation of the underlying knowledge which supports the comprehension process. It develops the view that intelligence is based on the ability to use large amounts of diverse kinds of knowledge in procedural ways, rather than on the possession of a few general and uniform principles. The paper also provides a unifying thread to a variety of recent approaches to natural language comprehension. We conclude with a brief discussion of how Artificial Intelligence may have a radical impact on education if the principles which it utilizes to explore the representation and use of knowledge are made available to the student to use in his own learning experiences.     

Implementation of a brief early intervention in times of socio-economic crisis: effects on parental stress

The paper investigates the effect of brief early intervention on parental stress in the midst of a socio-economic crisis, such as the one that struck Greece in the past decade. During this period, a psychoanalytically oriented prevention programme with parents and their infants/young children, named ‘Early Intervention Programme’, was designed and implemented in the Department of Child Psychiatry at ‘Aghia Sophia’ Children’s Hospital in Athens, Greece. The families that attended the programme were asked to participate in a research study regarding its effectiveness; data were collected from 102 mothers and 73 fathers. This paper presents the statistical findings regarding parental stress, mainly because it is a factor that has systematically been shown to negatively influence several aspects of a child’s development, but also because our hypothesis was that parental stress would be influenced by the negative external conditions. The results showed that both mothers’ and fathers’ stress levels were high before their participation to the programme (with fathers’ Total Stress scores falling within the clinical range), while they decreased to a statistically significant level after the completion of the programme. These findings are discussed in conjunction with some illustrative clinical material. Based on these, it is argued that the implementation of a psychoanalytically oriented brief early intervention programme with parents and infants/young children can alleviate parental stress, and thus support the parental capacity to efficiently deal with the high demands of early development, even in periods of economic crisis where the tensions for young parents are significant and the available mental health resources are scarce.