Here’s my annual look back at the topics that captured my attention in 2023. Over the past year I taught several undergraduate mental health classes, which is not my usual gig, although it does fit with my clinical training. The Two Minds Blog took a turn away from health psychology as a result, and veered toward traditional mental health topics instead. I had posts on mania and depression. I wrote about loneliness as a risk for health problems, as well as hopefulness as a form of stress inoculation. I wrote about the “common factors” in psychotherapy, which help to improve people’s mental health by way of the intuitive mind (I was particularly happy with that one). I also shared findings from a recent study where my colleagues and I implemented a burnout prevention program for nursing students, and another new paper that looked at the incidence of mental and physical health problems among back country search and rescue workers. Mental health has received more attention across the health care spectrum since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is certainly a good thing, so this new mental-health trend in blog topics might continue.
I did still have some content in my usual wheelhouse of health behavior change. I started the year with a post about streak tracking as a behavior-change tool, and I did a run-down of the mechanisms of action behind various smartphone apps that claim they can help in changing your behavior (New Year's might be a good time to re-read that one!). I analyzed monitoring effects as another potential tool for changing health behaviors. I looked at some of the unique challenges involved in changing your diet compared to other health behaviors, and I had a post examining the effects of social support as both a facilitator and a barrier to health behavior change.
Like basically everyone else, I wrote some pieces this year about artificial intelligence. In one of them, I revisited an old paper of mine that used natural language processing (the method that underpins modern AI), and considered whether this technology could be used for “concept analysis” to make sense of scientific literature. I had a post on emerging trends in “smart health” technology, which includes not only AI but also sensors and tailored messaging interventions, among others. And I took a look at how AI is affecting faculty at health professions schools across our various missions of teaching, practice, and research.
There were also several theory- or methods-focused pieces this year, which I have come to think about as building blocks for the future development of my research. I revisited the usefulness of immediacy in Two Minds Theory, which was originally called “temporal immediacy theory.” I wrote about methods for developing and testing tailored messages, which are the focus of several of my current studies. I did a two-part post on the idea of ambivalence, including its historical roots and its therapeutic potential in the context of motivational interviewing. And I looked at three possible mechanisms of action for psilocybin's effect on depression, an emerging mental health topic that I first explored last year and that may have broader implications for Two Minds Theory in the future. I wrote about the role of the narrative mind both in producing conspiracies and in making commencement speeches meaningful. The one on commencement addresses had some special meaning because this was the year my eldest daughter went off to college. Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel suggests one additional reason that commencement speeches have an impact: The speakers are usually old enough to have some life experience, yet also young enough that we can expect them to put their expressed values into future practice. The same is not true, for instance, of deathbed exhortations.
Finally, as usual, there were some posts on the various applications of Two Minds Theory. With my PhD student Aimee Techau, I wrote about inflammation as an intuitive-level influence on symptoms and health behavior. Inflammation has been a common topic of investigation in many studies that I have done with colleagues about symptoms and behavior, such as this one from 2020. But the post with Aimee was the first time it has shown up in a significant way on my blog. Inflammation is interesting because it has both physical (pain, swelling) and psychological (depression, sleep disturbance) effects, and may be a common underpinning for many different types of symptoms. With another colleague, Dr. Laurel Messer, I wrote about our recent paper on intuitive-mind factors that affect self-management for adolescents with type 1 diabetes. On the professional scientific front, I wrote about how the peer review process can be waylaid by intuitive-mind factors, but can also capitalize on the intuitive mind to improve fairness and accuracy in reviews. And I wrote about how our narratives within organizations needed to change with the official end of the COVID-19 pandemic emergency in May.
At the end of this fifth year of writing the Two Minds Blog, I notice that the topics often follow significant events in my own life, simply because that’s what is taking my attention at the time of writing. The through-line is about the basis, methods, and applications of Two Minds Theory, but it can go in a lot of directions from there. I didn’t have any biographical pieces this year, and only one historical one, but I still see Two Minds Theory as a useful lens for understanding other writers' thinking about the mind. I only tangentially touched on consciousness this year, which was a major focus in 2022, but that topic will be back in a couple of planned posts for next year. I will also certainly have more to say about artificial intelligence: Because this technology is so effective in reproducing the products of the narrative mind, it is also challenging our long-standing notions of consciousness and what it means to be human. I plan to write more about psychedelics, which remain a hot topic here in Colorado where they were recently legalized for therapeutic use, and how other treatment methods might give us the same type of intuitive-mind benefits without the drug-related risks. Neuroscience is also sure to remain a focus, along with sensor technologies and other methods for measuring intuitive-mind processes. Some forthcoming results from our ongoing study of type 1 diabetes self-management fall into that category. Thank you for reading, and special thanks to everyone who has posted comments or sent messages over the past year to continue a dialogue about topics introduced in this space. Overall, this blog continues to help me develop my ideas about how the mind produces behavior, and my work continues to be richer for it.
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