Though the impact our digital habits have on mental health may be increasingly grabbing the spotlight, there’s less talk about how these same technologies may one day be used to revolutionize how we treat mental illness. From chatbots that provide therapeutic conversation to apps that can monitor phone use to diagnose psychosis or manic episodes, medical providers now have new technological tools to supplement their first-hand interactions with patients. Virtual reality, which has yet to find its footing in popular entertainment, is making waves in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

These technologies are evolving rapidly—more rapidly than their regulation. Are we on the verge of a new era in psychiatric care, or will these treatments go the way of other now-condemned methods? Can algorithms reinvent our understanding of depression, anxiety, addiction, and other psychological issues, or at least make them easier to treat? Or is the industry known for "moving fast and breaking things” essentially at odds with a field governed by an oath “to first, do no harm”?

Join Future Tense in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Sept. 28, from 9-10:45 a.m. to consider how innovations in technology are reimagining the way we treat mental illness. To RSVP and for more information, visit the New America website, where the event will also be livestreamed.

Breakfast will be served.

Agenda:

9-9:45: Your Chatbot Therapist Will See You Now

Dr. John Torous
Co-director, Digital Psychiatry Program at the Beth Israel Deaconess, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Steven Chan
Clinical informatics fellow, UC–San Francisco, hospital medicine & psychiatry

David Dobbs
Journalist

Moderator:
Torie Bosch
Editor, Future Tense

9:45-10: Virtual Reality, Real Healing

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.
Director, Institute for Creative Technologies at USC
Research professor, USC Davis School of Gerontology and USC Keck School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

10-10:45: How Computer Science Is Reinventing Psychiatry

Skip Rizzo, Ph.D.
Director, Institute for Creative Technologies at USC
Research professor, USC Davis School of Gerontology and USC Keck School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Munmun de Choudhury, Ph.D.*
Assistant professor, the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech

Dr. Sarah Fineberg, Ph.D.
Instructor, Yale University Department of Psychiatry

Moderator:
Torie Bosch
Editor, Future Tense

*Correction, Sept. 14, 2017: This post originally misspelled Munmun de Choudhury's last name.