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There are now apps that can tell if you have Parkinson's just by listening to your voice on the phone.  Or help you monitor your heart remotely.  And now, tell if you're having, or about to have, a manic episode if you're bipolar , over the phone, and maybe even prevent a suicide. According to newswise.com, a new smart phone app detects mood swings through voice analysis.   "Subtle qualities of a person’s voice during everyday phone conversations shows promise for detecting early signs of mood changes in people with bipolar disorder, a University of Michigan team reports," the Web site notes. The researchers hope the app will eventually give people with bipolar disorder and their health care teams an early warning of the changing moods that give the condition its name. The technology could also help people with other conditions. The hope is to find a biological marker that makes those in need of urgent care stand out, and then help them to stabilize their ...

This may shock you (as it did me).  But most crimes are not committed by mentally ill people. According to a new study   of crimes committed by people with serious mental disorders, only 7.5 percent were directly related to symptoms of mental illness, newswise.com reports. Of course, it's the horrific crimes that are perpetrated by the mentally ill that we hear about, I suppose. But r esearchers who analyzed 429 crimes committed by 143 offenders with three major types of mental illness found that 3 percent of their crimes were directly related to symptoms of major depression, 4 percent to symptoms of schizophrenia disorders and 10 percent to symptoms of bipolar disorder. “When we hear about crimes committed by people with mental illness, they tend to be big headline-making crimes so they get stuck in people’s heads,” the Web site quotes lead researcher Jillian Peterson, PhD. “The vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent, not criminal and not dangerous...