Techy Madness
Researchers: Josephine Marschall, Kaitlan McKinney, Lena Damber, & Milou Bonewit
The Team
Josi is a 3rd year IBP student with plans to graduate this year. She is excited about this trip as she thoroughly enjoys discussing new findings with people. As for conducting her own research, her main interest lies in the clinical field with focus on psychedelics and mental disorders. Her futuristic goal is to become a psychedelic psychotherapist.
Kaitlan is a 3rd year IBP student as well as a 3rd year Honours student. She is a member of the ambassadors committee, and therefore likes to talk to people about their studies. She loves blueberry muffins and sitting in the sun. Kaitlan is an active member of the swimming association Aquamania as well as the student association SSR.
Lena is also a 3rd year IBP student who aims to graduate this year. After her bachelor she wishes to continue studying within the social sciences. She is curious about marketing, consumer psychology and organizational psychology.
As a team we support each other; we tend to collaborate creatively, therefore during the trip we will divide tasks. We like to laugh togehter and enjoy keeping our work light. We are interested, interesting, and hope to accomplish our goals.
Our Aim
Our aim is to learn about different psychiatric practices that have been developed in Tallinn. Tallinn is known for their technological innovation, and we believe that technological innovation can extend to all realsm of society, even the social sciences.
Research Questions
We wanted to find out how technology is employed in mental health practices in Tallinn. In order to investigate this theme the following questions have been formulated:
- How have recent technological advancements influenced Tallinn’s mental health practices?
- What is Tallinn’s vision for mental health technologies in the future?
- What are the benefits and drawbacks of the rising use of technology in the practice of mental health?
Josi is very interested in novel technology used for clinical practice. She has learned a few things about the current use of virtual reality in treatment of anxiety disorders and has also been trying out various meditation apps. She is thus very excited to learn what else is out there. Lena is interested in this research subject since she is curious how you can employ technology in order to help people, especially in a field such as mental health that could potentially benefit greatly from new interventions that is more accessible to a wider audience. She is excited about talking with actual researchers who are currently exploring this, and gaining new insight on the topic. Kaitlan is interested in this topic because she enjoys psychology and the integration of science and society. She finds research interesting. However, research combined with real-world practical usage is an even better fit. Therefore, visiting psychiatric centers seemed like a perfect addition to visiting the university.
Our Plan
In Tallinn, we plan to go to various organizations that are implementing/developing new technologies used/to be used in clinical practice. At these organizations, we will interview respective employees and note which technologies are being used, how they will be used, and what their future implications may be.
Locations
On May 10th at 11:00, we will be visiting the Regionaal Haigla Psychiatric Clinic. This clinic is made up for various in-patient departments as well as out-patient care. We will be specifically visiting the department of integrated treatment of first onset psychosis.
This clinic is in close collaboration with Tallinn Universities biomedical engineering center which has been granted an international patent for studying novel assessment methods for major depressive disorder.
On May 10th at 15.45, we are planning on visiting Tallinn University of Technology’s department of Biomedical Engineering. The department is a leading institution that carries out research within the field on a global scale. Our goal with the meeting is to meet a small group of researchers with a background in signal processing and engineering who are currently conducting research at the department with depression EEG. In addition to this, we have an appointment with the cooperation coordinator at Tallinn University’s eMed Lab.
How We Will Accomplish It
At the Regionaal Haigla Psychiatric Clinic we will be interviewing clinical psychologist Lijs Lend. She will teach us about a tool recently implemented called “CogPack”, a novel neuropsycholgoical training program which focuses on improving cognitive functions of individuals suffering from severe mental disorders. We will also be discussing other novel technologies currently being used at the unit. Lastly, Lijs will give us a tour of the psychiatric unit: first episodes of psychosis. During this visit we plan to note down the novel tools used, their uses, the benefits, the drawbacks, and future implications.
At Tallinn University of Technology we plan to meet with various researchers. At the Biomedical Engineering unit, the researchers will show to us how they employ depression EEG in order to detect depression in clients. Moreover, at the eMed lab, the cooperation coordinator will show us how the eMad Lab works, and explain how it is used for various projects within the e-health sector. During these two visits, we plan to gain a better understanding of the technical aspects of the technologies used, as well as how these technologies relate to their practical uses.We also plan to interview individuals around the old town of Tallinn about their own use of health- and mental health- technology. To do this, we have created a survey to hand out to individuals. In the survey we will ask about their technology use in general and how and when they use these more specialized health technologies. This will provide us with qualitative and quantitative data which we can later analyze using statisical programs.
