Browsing by Subject "Psychiatry"
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Behavior Monitoring Using Visual Data and Immersive Environments(2017-08) Fasching, JoshuaMental health disorders are the leading cause of disability in the United States and Canada, accounting for 25 percent of all years of life lost to disability and premature mortality (Disability Adjusted Life Years or DALYs). Furthermore, in the United States alone, spending for mental disorder related care amounted to approximately $201 billion in 2013. Given these costs, significant effort has been spent on researching ways to mitigate the detrimental effects of mental illness. Commonly, observational studies are employed in research on mental disorders. However, observers must watch activities, either live or recorded, and then code the behavior. This process is often long and requires significant effort. Automating these kinds of labor intensive processes can allow these studies to be performed more effectively. This thesis presents efforts to use computer vision and modern interactive technologies to aid in the study of mental disorders. Motor stereotypies are a class of behavior known to co-occur in some patients diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. Results are presented for activity classification in these behaviors. Behaviors in the context of environment, setup and task were also explored in relation to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Cleaning compulsions are a known symptom of some persons with OCD. Techniques were created to automate coding of handwashing behavior as part of an OCD study to understand the difference between subjects of different diagnosis. Instrumenting the experiment and coding the videos was a limiting factor in this study. Varied and repeatable environments can be enabled through the use of virtual reality. An end-to-end platform was created to investigate this approach. This system allows the creation of immersive environments that are capable of eliciting symptoms. By controlling the stimulus presented and observing the reaction in a simulated system, new ways of assessment are developed. Evaluation was performed to measure the ability to monitor subject behavior and a protocol was established for the system's future use.Item Depression in your primary care doctors office: What are we doing to help you?(2012-07-26) Lally, P.J.Item Practicing under the influence: the medicalization of psychotherapy.(2010-11) Olney, Sylvia HeroldUsing a postpositivist empirical method with meaning as central, this dissertation is based on a series of interviews with mental health workers and other professionals involved with or associated with mental health. At issue is the extent to which the biomedical model of human functioning has coopted the mental health field especially as it affects the practice of psychotherapy. I believe that this question is important because of the disablement one can observe in client/patients and others, as well as the philosophical dilemmas confronting practitioners, as a result of their collective exposure to the idea that people may be essentially powerless in the face of their own biology. This perception appears to contribute to the vested interests of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries but it flies in the face of developments in the field of psychoneuroimmunology, neuroscience, and other emerging perspectives, which validate a force-like dimension of mind or focus and intention, and which stand to free people from dominance by external agents including psychotropic medication.