Tag: Mental health

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New national action plan targets gaps at the intersection of mental health and criminal justice.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OTTAWA, ON – The Mental Health Commission of Canada (the Commission) today released “Finding New Pathways: An action plan for criminal justice and mental health in Canada”. The plan provides an evidence-based roadmap to address systemic gaps in care, coordination, and community supports, recognizing the impact of mental health on the criminal justice system.

Many are working to improve outcomes but needs remain high and progress is uneven. This action plan is a practical pan-Canadian reference point that seeks to contribute to the mental health and wellbeing of all individuals who interact with the criminal justice and forensic mental health systems, including those who work within them.

Developed through a rigorous five-year process, the action plan was shaped by input from national subject matter experts, research, and the lived and living experiences of justice-involved individuals and system workers. The action plan comes at a critical time, as individuals experiencing mental health challenges currently comprise roughly three-quarters of all federally incarcerated people in Canada.

“Meaningful and sustainable transformation is within reach for Canada,” said Lili-Anna Pereša, President and CEO of the Mental Health Commission of Canada. “While these transformative changes cannot be implemented overnight or by one group alone, this action plan serves as a starting point. It centralizes evidence-based approaches designed to break the cycle of recidivism and prioritize prevention, diversion, end-to-end supports and continuity of care.” The action plan stands on three strategic pillars:

  • Care, not criminalization: Ensuring all people in Canada have access to supports that help prevent involvement with the criminal justice system, and prioritizing diversion for those with mental illnesses.
  • Care during criminal justice involvement: Providing access to high-quality, trauma-informed, and culturally safe health and social supports for those within the system.
  • Care after criminal justice involvement: continuity of care and seamless integration into community-based mental health
    and substance use services upon release.

“Finding New Pathways” identifies 68 specific recommendations across individual, community, institutional, systemic, and societal levels. It pays particular attention to priority populations, including people from First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, and African, Caribbean, and Black, and other equity-deserving groups who are currently overrepresented in the justice system and face distinct mental health needs.

The action plan further highlights the critical importance of supporting the psychological health and safety of workers within the criminal justice and forensic mental health systems, noting that public safety personnel are significantly more likely to experience symptoms consistent with mental disorders than the general population.

Howard Sapers, current executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, former Correctional Investigator of Canada, and project advisor for the action plan, emphasized the necessity of these reforms: “ or too long, Canada’s criminal justice system has been asked to shoulder responsibilities it was never designed to carry. The over representation of people with mental health needs in police encounters, courts, and correctional facilities is a predictable consequence of systemic gaps in care, coordination, and community supports. The Mental Health Commission of Canada’s National Action Plan offers something we have been missing for years: a coherent, evidence-based roadmap that prioritizes health, human rights, and dignity.”.

Media Contact:

For English requests, please contact Josie Sabatino at jsabatino@summa.ca; 250-649-6856.

For French requests, please contact Carlene Variyan, cvariyan@summa.ca; 613-601-7456.

The post New national action plan targets gaps at the intersection of mental health and criminal justice. appeared first on Mental Health Commission of Canada.

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Detection of Self-Harm in Electronic Mental Health Records Using Privacy-Preserving Local Language Models: Methodological Study

Background: Self-harm is the strongest risk factor for suicide and an important outcome for mental health care. Although prevalent in clinical populations, it is often imprecisely captured in routinely collected clinical data, where it is often recorded and stored as unstructured free text. Contemporary language models, such as GPT (OpenAI) and Gemini (Google), can analyze free-text clinical notes, but such models may violate data governance of processing sensitive patient data. Objective: This study aimed to evaluate whether a privacy-preserving language model running entirely within an institution’s secure computing infrastructure (here, the UK National Health Service [NHS]) could accurately identify the presence and timing of self-harm using electronic health records from secondary mental health care. Methods: Clinical notes were drawn from Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust using a multistage workflow: (1) a random sample of 1000 patients with a psychiatric diagnosis, defined according to the (; codes F00–F99); (2) candidate-note identification using a Gemma3-4b language model to flag notes containing self-harm content; and (3) from those candidates, 1352 randomly sampled notes were selected for expert annotation, resulting in gold-standard corpus enriched for self-harm content. Clinical notes were annotated for the presence of self-harm and its timing (≤90 days, >90 days, or unknown). A privacy-preserving locally served 27-billion-parameter Gemma 3 language model (“Gemma3-27b”) was used as the core model. Prompts were systematically developed and refined using a labeled development set to identify self-harm and generate a structured output per clinical record. Gemma3-27b performance was compared against a strong baseline multilabel text classification model based on robustly optimized BERT pretraining approach (RoBERTa), a transformer-based language model architecture. Model performance was evaluated using precision, recall, and the -score (harmonic mean of precision and recall), with 95% CIs estimated from 1000 bootstrap samples with replacement. Results: Gemma3-27b outperformed the RoBERTa classifier across all categories, achieving Precision=0.92, Recall=0.92 (sensitivity), and -score=0.92 for notes containing self-harm, and Precision=0.97, Recall=0.97 (specificity), and -score=0.97 for notes without self-harm. For the 51 notes labeled as recent self-harm in the held-out test set, Gemma3-27b achieved Precision=0.84, Recall=0.75, and -score=0.79. The global weighted -score of Gemma3-27b across all categories was 0.88, compared to 0.85 for RoBERTa. Conclusions: With systematic prompt development on a labeled development set, but no gradient-based fine-tuning, the current Gemma3-27b language model matched or exceeded a fine-tuned RoBERTa classifier for ascertaining self-harm events and their timing. Aggregate gains were modest, while improvements were largest in the most challenging, lower-frequency timing categories. On a simplified binary recent-versus-other task, RoBERTa performed marginally better, indicating that supervised classifiers remain highly effective when the task is simplified and sufficient labeled data exist. This work demonstrates the technical feasibility of privacy-preserving self-harm detection within a secure NHS research environment.
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Chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment and non-pharmacological interventions targeting the nervous system: a systematic review

BackgroundChemotherapy-related cognitive impairment (CRCI) represents an increasingly recognized problem in the growing cancer survivor population within the US and worldwide. CRCI is characterized by deficits in memory, sustained attention, and executive function, which significantly worsens the cancer survivors’ quality of life. An increasing number of studies have been conducted using novel intervention approaches aimed at mitigating CRCI. In this systematic review, we sought to summarize the current evidence of cognitive improvement in cancer survivors receiving non-pharmacological interventions with neurostimulatory effects following chemotherapy.MethodsWe screened five databases (Embase, MEDLINE, PubMED, Scopus, and PsycINFO) for original articles reporting the administration of any type of brain stimulation or complementary/alternative therapies targeting the central and/or peripheral nervous system to improve cognitive outcomes in cancer survivors reporting CRCI. We systematically extracted information from each eligible study using participant, intervention, comparison, outcome(s), and study design (PICOS) framework according to Cochrane recommendations. We used the critical appraisal tool by Joanna Briggs Institute to assess the risk of bias.ResultsAfter screening 2,708 manuscripts, we performed a full-text review of 77 papers and identified 17 studies that met our inclusion criteria: nine randomized controlled trials, four case reports, one case series, two quasi-experimental study, and one cohort study. We identified seven studies which focused on CRCI and 10 others where cognitive function was properly reported for inclusion. Subjective and objective cognitive outcome measures reflecting overall performance, attention, working memory, processing speed, and quality of life with separate cognitive function reporting were assessed in patient(s) treated with transcranial direct current stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation, multisensory stimulation, Flexyx neurotherapy system, acupuncture, and electroacupuncture. Mild improvements in some of the cognitive outcome measures were observed in all studies. The weaknesses of these studies can be attributed to insufficient statistical power and testing, lack of a control group, randomization, blinding, and incorrect statistical methods.Discussion and conclusionWe found only a handful of trials reporting cognitive outcomes in CRCI interventions, with small sample sizes and biased study designs limiting the validity of the statistically significant findings. Our systematic review provides rationale for assessing the impact of non-pharmacological neurostimulatory techniques on CRCI in large-scale randomized controlled trials.
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Determinants of mental health distress among health workers in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Healthcare workers (HCWs) remain at elevated risk of psychological distress, yet post-pandemic evidence from the United Arab Emirates is scarce. This cross-sectional electronic survey assessed depression, anxiety, and stress among physicians and nurses providing direct clinical care across Abu Dhabi Health Services Company in March 2024. Mental health outcomes were measured using the DASS-21, and multivariable logistic regression identified associated factors. Among 383 HCWs (mean age 40.8 years; 70% female; 65% nurses), the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress was 49%, 45%, and 46%, respectively. Middle Eastern HCWs had significantly higher odds of depression (Adjusted Odds Ratio (aOR)=1.94; 95% CI: 1.13–3.35), anxiety (aOR=1.80; 95% CI: 1.03–3.21), and stress (aOR=2.42; 95% CI: 1.37–4.33) compared with Asian HCWs. Workplace conflict strongly predicted distress as conflicts with colleagues increased the odds of depression (aOR=3.36; 95% CI: 1.92–6.05), anxiety (aOR=1.99; 95% CI: 1.14–3.53), and stress (aOR=3.78; 95% CI: 2.10–7.00). Chronic fatigue was associated with depression (aOR=4.21; 95% CI: 1.61–13.2), anxiety (aOR=3.89; 95% CI: 1.39–13.8), and stress (aOR=3.34; 95% CI: 1.32–9.63). Protective factors included age ≥40 years for stress (aOR=0.61; 95% CI: 0.39–0.96) and postgraduate education for anxiety (aOR=0.55; 95% CI: 0.31–0.94) with nurses had lower stress than physicians (aOR=0.47; 95% CI: 0.23–0.94). Post-pandemic mental-health symptoms remain substantial among Abu Dhabi HCWs, particularly younger providers and those exposed to workplace conflict or chronic fatigue. Sustained mental-health programs, routine screening, and targeted support for high-risk groups are urgently required to protect clinician well-being and healthcare system resilience.
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Platform shift in mental health support among undergraduates: from campus counselors to GenAI-based consultation​

China is advancing the implementation of the “AI+” initiative and exploring the promotion of AI technology in scenarios such as health management and assisted diagnosis. Against this backdrop, universities are accelerating the adoption of GenAI virtual counseling tools to address the growing psychological issues among undergraduates, including depression, anxiety, and academic stress. However, research on why students are shifting from traditional in-person psychological consultations to GenAI consultations remains limited. Therefore, this study focuses on the student population, collecting data through online questionnaires and employing the PLS-SEM method to systematically analyze the key factors and underlying mechanisms influencing students’ willingness to transition from campus psychologists to GenAI virtual doctors. The findings reveal that privacy concerns, social anxiety, and stigma surrounding mental illness significantly enhance students’ inclination toward AI consultations. The comfort level of interacting with AI and the accessibility of AI services play mediating roles. Additionally, perceived AI information quality significantly moderates the pathways through which privacy concerns, social anxiety, and stigma influence the willingness to switch. This study provides a theoretical foundation and practical reference for universities to develop intelligent psychological support systems that align with students’ actual needs.
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Pathway-Matched Resilience-Oriented Therapy in Rwanda

Conditions: Mental Health; Psychological Trauma; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic; Depression; Anxiety; Aggression; Substance-related Disorders; Psychosocial Functioning

Interventions: Behavioral: Resilience-Oriented Therapy – Emotion-Regulation Variant; Behavioral: Resilience-Oriented Therapy – Identity-Development Variant; Behavioral: Resilience-Oriented Therapy – Behavioural Self-Management Variant

Sponsors: Alexandros Lordos, PhD; Centre for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development; University of Rwanda; Interpeace

Completed
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Neuropixels Opto Integrates Electrophysiology and Optogenetics to Probe Neuronal Function

High-resolution extracellular electrophysiology is typically used to record from neurons in order to understand brain function. Combining electrophysiology with optogenetics allows researchers to test the causal role of specific neurons by activating or inactivating those populations while recording the effects of neural activity.

Now, a new technology, co-developed by UCL scientists, simultaneously records and manipulates neuronal activity deep within the brain. The device, known as Neuropixels Opto and researched in mice, integrates electrophysiology and optogenetics in a single probe, enabling unprecedented insight into how individual neurons in the brain function and interact. By packing around 1,000 closely spaced recording sites onto an ultra-thin probe, it is possible to capture high-resolution signals from individual brain cells while monitoring large neural networks at the same time. The device could transform our understanding of neural circuits and neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

“This makes it possible, for the first time, to directly test how specific neurons influence the activity of surrounding circuits—revealing causal relationships between neuronal activity and brain function,” notes Matteo Carandini, PhD, a professor at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology. “The ability to both record and control neuronal activity in the same experiment represents a significant advance for neuroscience.”

This work is published in Nature Methods in the paper, “Neuropixels Opto: combining high-resolution electrophysiology and optogenetics.” The device, which packs 960 electrical recording sites and two sets of 14 light emitters onto a 70-μm-wide, 1-cm-long shank, allows spatially addressable optogenetic stimulation with blue and red light. The device allows researchers to monitor the electrical activity of hundreds of neurons while also selectively activating or silencing specific cells using light.

“The brain processes information through complex patterns of electrical activity, with billions of neurons communicating via rapid electrical signals,” explains Carandini. “Understanding how these signals give rise to behavior, thought and disease requires tools that can both observe and influence neuronal activity.”

“Until now, scientists have typically relied on separate approaches: electrophysiological probes to record neural activity, and optogenetics to control it,” Carandini adds. “Combining the two has proved challenging, particularly in deeper brain regions, where delivering light without disrupting sensitive recordings is technically difficult. Neuropixels Opto overcomes these limitations by integrating both capabilities into a single device, enabling simultaneous measurement and manipulation of neural circuits.”

Karolina Socha, PhD, research fellow at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, has used the probes to investigate the function of the cerebral cortex. “We were surprised to discover that the activity of neurons in the cortex can be remarkably localized. Up to now, we thought that neurons are so interconnected that there would be no way to activate some of them without activating many others,” she said. “The new Neuropixels Opto probes revealed that these neurons can operate not only in concert but also rather independently.”

The technology may also have important implications for understanding neurological and psychiatric conditions. Many disorders, including schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease, are associated with disruptions in how neurons communicate. By providing a clearer picture of how neural circuits function in both healthy and diseased states, Neuropixels Opto could support the development of more targeted treatments.

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The effects of unilateral deprivation amblyopia on fixation stability

IntroductionDeprivation amblyopia is a neurodevelopmental disorder caused by obstruction of the visual pathway due to congenital cataracts, ptosis or corneal opacities that occur during early visual development. Visual deficits persist into adulthood even though the obstruction (e.g. cataracts) have been removed early in life. The effects of deprivation amblyopia on oculomotor control have not been studied. The present study evaluates the effects of unilateral deprivation amblyopia resulting from congenital cataracts on fixation stability.MethodSeven adults with unilateral deprivation amblyopia and 18 adults with normal vision were tested during binocular and monocular viewing. A video-based eye tracker was used to record eye position of the viewing eye(s) (closed-loop condition with visual feedback) and the covered eye (open-loop condition with no visual feedback).ResultsFindings for the control group were consistent with previous studies. Fixation stability (eye position stability), evaluated using bivariate contour ellipse area (BCEA), microsaccade rate, amplitude and slow drift velocity, was best during binocular viewing, and significantly worse during open-loop monocular viewing. In comparison to the control group, patients had similar fellow eye fixation stability under binocular viewing, but fixation (eye position stability) was poorer under monocular closed-loop and open-loop viewing. Fixation stability was worst in the amblyopic eye in all viewing conditions.DiscussionOur findings demonstrate fixation stability deficits in adults with unilateral deprivation amblyopia, underscoring the lasting impact of early visual deprivation on oculomotor function.