Tag Archives: Smartphone

Eight-month-old Infant dies after mobile battery explodes in UP’s Bareilly district

Posted on by
Reply
An eight-month-old infant in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district died after the battery of a mobile phone kept next to her on charging mode exploded, police said.

The phone, purchased nearly six months ago, already had a swollen battery plugged into a switch connected to a solar panel.

Kusum Kashyap, mother of the baby Neha, was not in the room at the time of the explosion.

Battery exploded

She rushed in after hearing a loud noise and cries for help from her other daughter Nandini.

The baby had suffered serious burn injuries and died during treatment in the hospital.

Police said no complaint had been lodged so far but it was a case of negligence by the parents.

The father of the child, Suneel Kumar Kashyap, 30, is a labourer and lives in an under-construction house without a power connection. His family uses a solar plate and a battery for lighting and charging mobile phones.

Smartphone apps reduce depression

Posted on by
Reply

New Australian-led research has confirmed that smartphone apps are an effective treatment option for depression, paving the way for safe and accessible interventions for the millions of people around the world diagnosed with this condition.

Depression is the most prevalent mental disorder and a leading cause of global disability, with mental health services worldwide struggling to meet the demand for treatment.

In an effort to tackle this rising challenge, researchers from Australia’s National Institute of Complementary Medicine (NICM), Harvard Medical School, The University of Manchester, and the Black Dog Institute in Australia examined the efficacy of smartphone-based treatments for depression.

The researchers systematically reviewed 18 randomised controlled trials which examined a total of 22 different smartphone-delivered mental health interventions.

The studies involved more than 3400 male and female participants between the ages of 18-59 with a range of mental health symptoms and conditions including major depression, mild to moderate depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety and insomnia.

The first of its kind research, published today in World Psychiatry found that overall smartphone apps significantly reduced people’s depressive symptoms, suggesting these new digital therapies can be useful for managing the condition.

Lead author of the paper, NICM postdoctoral research fellow Joseph Firth says this was an important finding which presented a new opportunity for providing accessible and affordable care for patients who might not otherwise have access to treatment.

“The majority of people in developed countries own smartphones, including younger people who are increasingly affected by depression,” said Mr Firth.

“Combined with the rapid technological advances in this area, these devices may ultimately be capable of providing instantly accessible and highly effective treatments for depression, reducing the societal and economic burden of this condition worldwide.”

Co-author, NICM deputy director, Professor Jerome Sarris highlighted the importance of the findings for opening up non-stigmatising and self-managing avenues of care.

“The data shows us that smartphones can help people monitor, understand and manage their own mental health. Using apps as part of an ‘integrative medicine’ approach for depression has been demonstrated to be particularly useful for improving mood and tackling symptoms in these patients,” said Professor Sarris.

When it comes to the question of “Which app is best?” and “For who?”, the results suggested these interventions so far may be most applicable to those with mild to moderate depression, as the benefits in major depression have not been widely studied as of yet.

The researchers found no difference in apps which apply principles of mindfulness compared to cognitive behavioural therapy or mood monitoring programs.

However, interventions that used entirely ‘self-contained’ apps – meaning the app did not reply on other aspects such as clinician and computer feedback – were found to be significantly more effective than ‘non-self-contained’ apps.

The authors suggested this might be due to the comprehensiveness of these particular stand-alone apps rather than the combination of therapies.

Despite the promising early results, there is currently no evidence to suggest that using apps alone can outperform standard psychological therapies, or reduce the need for antidepressant medications.

According to co-author and co-director of the digital psychiatry program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a clinical fellow in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Dr John Torous, the research is a timely and promising step forward in the use of smartphones in mental health.

“Patients and doctors are faced with a vast array of mental health apps these days, and knowing which ones are actually helpful is imperative,” said Dr Torous.

“This research provides much needed information on the effectiveness of apps for depression, and offers important clues into the types of apps which can help patients manage their condition.”

Jennifer Nicholas, a PhD Candidate at Black Dog Institute and co-author of the paper says with the knowledge that apps can be effective for managing depression, future research must now investigate which features produce these beneficial effects.

“Given the multitude of apps available – many of them unregulated – it’s critical that we now unlock which specific app attributes reap the greatest benefits, to help ensure that all apps available to people with depression are effective.”

Smartphone tracking shows fear affects where youth spend time

Posted on by
Reply

Youth spend less time in their neighborhoods if area residents have a high fear of crime, according to a new study that used smartphones to track kids’ whereabouts.

Researchers found that adolescents aged 11 to 17 spent over an hour less each day on average in their neighborhoods if residents there were very fearful, compared to kids from areas perceived as being safer. Higher fear of crime was linked to high-poverty neighborhoods.

This is the first study to use smartphone data to track a large, diverse sample of young people to determine where they spend their time, said Christopher Browning, lead author of the study and professor of sociology at The Ohio State University.

“It is clear that kids who live in high-poverty areas are spending less time in their neighborhoods and that is linked to a collective fear of crime,” Browning said.

“This has never been tested before with GPS data that tracks movements on a minute-by-minute basis.”

Browning presented the research Aug. 14 in Montreal at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

This preliminary data is from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study, which Browning leads. The study is examining the lives of 1,402 representative youths living in 184 neighborhoods in Franklin County, Ohio. This includes the city of Columbus and its suburbs.

In this study, which was conducted April 2014 to July 2016, participating adolescents were given a smartphone that they kept with them for one week. The GPS function on the phone reported their location every 30 seconds.

Overall, results showed youth spent an average of 52 percent of their waking time each day at home, 13 percent in their neighborhoods, and 35 percent outside of their neighborhoods. About 27 percent of the time when they were not at home while awake, they were in their neighborhoods.

All caregivers of youth in the study were asked to rate how afraid they were to walk in their neighborhood.

Results showed that caregivers’ ratings were only weakly connected to how much time their own children spent in the neighborhood. But the collective fear ratings of all the caregivers who lived in or regularly visited a neighborhood was strongly linked to the amount of time kids spent close to home.

“Once enough people stop spending time in a neighborhood because they are afraid, others will withdraw, whether they are afraid or not,” Browning said.

“If teens go to the local playground and there’s no one to play pickup basketball with, they will go outside the neighborhood to find their friends, or spend more time at home.”

The study looked at whether the presence or absence of amenities like schools, community centers and stores could explain why youth in high-poverty neighborhoods spent less time there. But this factor explained little when compared to the collective fear of crime.

“Many cities have social services like recreation centers that are targeted for disadvantaged neighborhoods,” Browning said.

“But our results suggest these amenities may be underutilized because young people are withdrawing from the neighborhood. Whether they are afraid to go there or just following their friends elsewhere, young people spend less time in disadvantaged neighborhoods.”

Upcoming studies using this same data set will examine whether kids in disadvantaged neighborhoods spend their extra time at home, or outside of their area.