National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences

The Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare of India has formally launched this week its national tele-mental health programme. WHAT IT'S ABOUT Called Tele Mental Health Assistance and Networking Across States (Tele-MANAS), it will provide free, round-the-clock teleconsultation service for mental health concerns. It runs a network of 23 tele-mental health centres of excellence with the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) at its core and the International Institute of Information Technology-Bangalore providing technology support. The Indian Institute of Technology-Bengaluru and the National Health Systems Resource Centre are also providing technical support for the programme. It will be organised in a two-tier system: Tier 1 comprises state-level cells with trained counsellors and mental health specialists and Tier 2 comprises the e-Sanjeevani, India's national telemedicine service, which provides audio-visual consultation, and specialists from the District Mental Health Programme and partner medical colleges who are providing in-person consultations. In a press statement, the union government said it aims to open at least one Tele-MANAS cell in each state or union territory across the country. Presently, five regional coordination centres have been set up, along with 51 state or union territory-level Tele-MANAS cells. Additionally, about 900 counsellors have been trained by NIMHANS for the programme. This initial rollout, the government said, will provide basic support and counselling through a centralized Interactive Voice Response system that is being customised for use across states and union territories. Tele-MANAS is planned to be linked with other services such as e-Sanjeevani and Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, as well as with mental health professionals and emergency psychiatric facilities. "Eventually, this will include the entire spectrum of mental wellness and illness, and integrate all systems that provide mental health care," the government added. WHY IT MATTERS In launching Tele-MANAS, the Indian government recognises the ongoing mental health crisis in the country in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the start of the pandemic, around 40% of Indians have been experiencing some form of mental health problems, according to a survey report by the Indian Psychiatry Society. The government also acknowledges the "urgent need" to establish a digital mental health network to address population health challenges brought about by the pandemic. THE LARGER CONTEXT The establishment of a national tele-mental health programme was first announced early this year in the release of the Union Budget 22-23 . In an earlier statement, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said the programme aims to transform access to mental healthcare by providing counselling and care using standard, evidence-based, culturally appropriate tools; enhancing access to quality, standardised, and free mental health services; and helping to connect with various mental health care services.

Mayo Clinic researchers developed a set of paradigms, or viewpoints, that simplify comparisons between effects of electrical stimulation on the brain Mayo, Google Research develop new AI algorithm to improve brain stimulation devices to treat disease. (Credit: Mayo Clinic) For millions of people with epilepsy and movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, electrical stimulation of the brain already is widening treatment possibilities. In the future, electrical stimulation may help people with psychiatric illness and direct brain injuries, such as stroke. However, studying how brain networks interact with each other is complicated. Brain networks can be explored by delivering brief pulses of electrical current in one area of a patient’s brain while measuring voltage responses in other areas. In principle, one should be able to infer the structure of brain networks from these data. However, with real-world data, the problem is difficult because the recorded signals are complex, and a limited amount of measurements can be made. To make the problem manageable, Mayo Clinic researchers developed a set of paradigms, or viewpoints, that simplify comparisons between effects of electrical stimulation on the brain. Because a mathematical technique to characterize how assemblies of inputs converge in human brain regions did not exist in the scientific literature, the Mayo team collaborated with an international expert in artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to develop a new type of algorithm called “basis pro identification.” In a study published in PLOS Computational Biology, a patient with a brain tumor underwent placement of an electrocorticographic electrode array to locate seizures and map brain function before a tumor was removed. Every electrode interaction resulted in hundreds to thousands of time points to be studied using the new algorithm. “Our findings show that this new type of algorithm may help us understand which brain regions directly interact with one another, which in turn may help guide placement of electrodes for stimulating devices to treat network brain diseases,” says Kai Miller, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic neurosurgeon and first author of the study. “As new technology emerges, this type of algorithm may help us to better treat patients with epilepsy, movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease, and psychiatric illnesses like obsessive compulsive disorder and depression.” “Neurologic data to date is perhaps the most challenging and exciting data to model for AI researchers,” says Klaus-Robert Mueller, Ph.D., study co-author and member of the Google Research Brain Team. Dr. Mueller is co-director of the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data and director of the Machine Learning Group ― both at Technical University of Berlin. In the study, the authors provide a downloadable code package so others may explore the technique. “Sharing the developed code is a core part of our efforts to help reproducibility of research,” says Dora Hermes, Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic biomedical engineer and senior author. This research was supported by National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Science Clinical and Translational Science Award, National Institute of Mental Health Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience, and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Source: Company Press Release