Recently I wrote a post on mental health in the palm of your hand - exploring how technology and iPhone applications were being used to share medical and mental health information.

Following that post I contacted Dr. Harvey Castro at Deep Pocket Series to ask him about Sad Scale - a self screening Depression test and iPhone application tool.

Understanding the need for a Depression scale for children, Dr. Castro worked with our team to adapt the Kutcher Adolescent Depression Scale (KADS) for use on the Sad Scale application.

The KADS, along with the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale for Children (CES-DC), are now available on the Sad Scale. These applications will give you a graph on your progress and will also allow you to email your health care provider the results of the test.

The iPhone application is available now and can be downloaded for $0.99 from iTunes.

We are now adapting the Kutcher Generalized Social Anxiety Disorder Scale for Adolescents (K-GSADS-A) … stay tuned! (literally)

~ David Venn

So after months of team discussion we have finally made our first foray into Facebook! Yeah I know … we are a little behind the trend - but better late than never.

Our goal is to get over 1,000 people to become a fan of our “Help Canada Create a Youth Mental Health Strategy” page.

The Facebook page is an offshoot of our Evergreen project - a collaborative initiative with the Mental Health Commission of Canada to produce a document to help improve policy and programming related to child and adolescent mental health across Canada.

We created the Facebook page for 4 primary reasons:

1. Engagement - we want people to share their opinions with us about what values and principles Canadians want to uphold in relation to mental illness and child and adolescent mental health services. On July 1st the public forum will be open for you to share your voice.
2. Education - an informed public is a strong public. Our Facebook page will feature some of the guides and information uploaded on our teenmentalheatlh.org site. We want to give people the best available info to make good decisions about their mental health.
3. Advocacy - the Mental Health Commission of Canada is committed to creating a comprehensive mental health strategy for Canada and are in support of a component specific to the needs of children and youth. Youth mental health will stay in the shadows unless we speak up and advocate for change - Facebook is just one of the ways you can speak up.
4. Connection - facebook is a great way to connect with people who share similar causes to you. By creating this page we want to connect people who care about youth mental health and want to make a difference to Canada’s mental health system.

Help make a difference for thousands of young people. Join “Help Canada Create a Youth Mental Health Strategy“.

A while ago we wrote about Health 2.0 - an emerging concept of health care that uses web 2.0 technologies to promote collaboration between patients, physicians, health care professionals, and other members of the health community.

It was only a matter of time before these technologies made the leap from the computer screen to the palm of your hand. The iPhone has been particularly successful at developing health 2.0 applications for users on the go.

Here are a couple of cool examples of applications changing the way we receive health information:

The Human Atlas
The Human Atlas iPhone application provides  point-of-care access to 3D animations of common medical treatments and conditions, (approximately one-two minutes in length) with accompanying narration.

Epocrates Rx
The free Epocrates Rx software for iPhone OS puts continually updated peer-reviewed drug information at your fingertips.

Eponym Touch
This application brings the eponym database to your iPhone or iPod touch. The database currently contains more than 1,600 medical eponyms and is updated from time to time.

Mental health is hopefully the next frontier! The people over at Healthcare Administration Degree notified us about their 100 Best iPhone Apps for Your Mental Health.

Here some others I found related to mental illness:

Sad Scale
Sad Scale is an iPhone application which has three screening tests for general depression, postpartum depression and geriatric depression. Once completed the user can then email their primary doctor with the results.

iConverse
iConverse is an educational tool designed for young children and individuals with communicative disabilities, and also toddler-aged children who have yet to master language. Interestingly Scothoser’s Corner identified that this application may be helpful to children living with autism.

But as always the best communications is face to face. Don’t rely on these tools in place of doctor-patient visits.

~ D. Venn

Web 2.0 has been exploding over the past few years. Simply put Web 2.0 is a an innovative, creative and collaborative way to share information on the web using tools such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, and blogs.

Because of the constant changing nature of the internet, Web 2.0 is also constantly changing to meet user demand. It’s application is expanding to sectors beyond marketing and business. One of these expansions it into the health care sector.

Health 2.0 is an emerging concept of health care that uses web 2.0 technologies to promote collaboration between patients, physicians, health care professionals, and other members of the health community. It’s application is ever-changing, and the evidence for its effectiveness is still raw, but there’s a lot of potential for this type of new technology to improve mental health education and mental health care.

For more info check out Chris Paton’s blog, Health 2.0 Conference and Medicine 2.0 Conference.

~ D. Venn