The Future of Mental Health Technology

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. Even virtual reality, a technology that 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., to consider how innovations in technology are reimagining the way we treat mental illness.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America and Arizona State University.

This event will be livestreamed on this page. Follow the conversation online using#FTMentalHealth and following @FutureTenseNow.

Breakfast will be served.

Agenda:

9:00-9:45: Your Chatbot Therapist Will See You Now

• Dr. John Torous, @JohnTorousMD
  Codirector, Digital Psychiatry Program at the Beth Israel Deaconess, Harvard Medical School
• Dr. Steven Chan, @StevenChanMD
  Clinical Informatics Fellow, University of California San Francisco, Hospital Medicine and Psychiatry
• David Dobbs, @David_Dobbs
  Journalist
• Moderator: Christine Rosen
  Future Tense Fellow; senior editor, The New Atlantis

9:45-10:00: Virtual Reality, Real Healing

• Skip Rizzo
  Director, Institute for Creative Technologies at University of Southern California; research professor, USC Davis School of Gerontology and USC Keck School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

10:00-10:45: How Computer Science is Reinventing Psychiatry 

• Skip Rizzo
  Director, Institute for Creative Technologies at University of Southern California; research professor, USC Davis School of Gerontology and USC Keck School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
• Munmun de Coudhury, @munmun10
  Assistant professor, The School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech
• Dr. Sarah Fineberg
  Instructor, Yale University Department of Psychiatry
• Moderator: Christine Rosen
  Future Tense Fellow; senior editor, The New Atlantis