Post by Admin on Jan 19, 2021 12:03:57 GMT
Should smartphone data be harnessed to track mental health?
psyche.co/ideas/should-smartphone-data-be-harnessed-to-track-mental-health
Every time you go online, you leave behind a trace. This ‘digital footprint’ or ‘data exhaust’ is used somewhat notoriously by social media companies, who store and mine large volumes of personal data for commercial motives. For example, Facebook customises adverts based on a person’s likes and searches; YouTube recommends videos based on your viewing history. Yet all this digital data could play another role of more direct benefit to users: it could reveal something important about a person’s mental health. This possibility has given rise to an exciting new research area called digital phenotyping, which could offer a transformative new tool for mental health care.
In some respects, the connection between smartphone habits and mental health is obvious. At the simplest level, if an individual starts using an app for anxiety management, this is a strong indication that they’re experiencing anxiety. If someone suddenly starts using their phone a lot in the middle of the night, that could be a sign that they have insomnia.
Other potential links are more subtle. Most of us are familiar with the GPS sensor on our smartphones, which we use to guide us from one place to another – but geolocation data might also offer clues about whether we have depression. For example, some initial evidence suggests that people who are depressed show reduced variety in the places they visit. The types of locations could also be significant: one initial study found that participants with lower levels of depression and anxiety tended to spend more time in spiritual locations (eg, temples, prayer rooms) than those with high levels, and that nondepressed participants spent more time at work than depressed ones. However, these relationships were modest and inconsistent, so more research is needed on this underexplored idea.
Levels of social activity could also provide clues about a person’s isolation or mental ill-health. One study of people with schizophrenia found that reductions in the number and duration of outgoing calls made by a participant, as well as reductions in the number of text messages that they sent and received, were associated with relapses of the disorder. Other researchers have proposed that the Bluetooth feature in smartphones could be used to measure the frequency of a person’s offline social interactions – known to be important for mental health – by detecting how many other Bluetooth devices are near the person’s smartphone.
Language provides a window into our minds, and disturbances in spoken language (such as using an impoverished vocabulary) can be indicators of mental illness. For example, one research project analysed transcripts of face-to-face interviews with young people at risk of psychosis and found that the use of less complex and more incoherent language predicted subsequent onset of the disorder. The same principle can be applied to online language. The newsfeeds and forums of Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, for example, can provide a rich source of linguistic material for detecting mental health problems. In one study, researchers analysed the previous Facebook posts of patients attending an emergency department. Using this information only, they could reliably predict which patients had a diagnosis of depression in their medical records – with an accuracy approximately matching that of screening surveys. Language suggesting hostility, negative emotions or a preoccupation with the self were all predictors of depression.
psyche.co/ideas/should-smartphone-data-be-harnessed-to-track-mental-health
Every time you go online, you leave behind a trace. This ‘digital footprint’ or ‘data exhaust’ is used somewhat notoriously by social media companies, who store and mine large volumes of personal data for commercial motives. For example, Facebook customises adverts based on a person’s likes and searches; YouTube recommends videos based on your viewing history. Yet all this digital data could play another role of more direct benefit to users: it could reveal something important about a person’s mental health. This possibility has given rise to an exciting new research area called digital phenotyping, which could offer a transformative new tool for mental health care.
In some respects, the connection between smartphone habits and mental health is obvious. At the simplest level, if an individual starts using an app for anxiety management, this is a strong indication that they’re experiencing anxiety. If someone suddenly starts using their phone a lot in the middle of the night, that could be a sign that they have insomnia.
Other potential links are more subtle. Most of us are familiar with the GPS sensor on our smartphones, which we use to guide us from one place to another – but geolocation data might also offer clues about whether we have depression. For example, some initial evidence suggests that people who are depressed show reduced variety in the places they visit. The types of locations could also be significant: one initial study found that participants with lower levels of depression and anxiety tended to spend more time in spiritual locations (eg, temples, prayer rooms) than those with high levels, and that nondepressed participants spent more time at work than depressed ones. However, these relationships were modest and inconsistent, so more research is needed on this underexplored idea.
Levels of social activity could also provide clues about a person’s isolation or mental ill-health. One study of people with schizophrenia found that reductions in the number and duration of outgoing calls made by a participant, as well as reductions in the number of text messages that they sent and received, were associated with relapses of the disorder. Other researchers have proposed that the Bluetooth feature in smartphones could be used to measure the frequency of a person’s offline social interactions – known to be important for mental health – by detecting how many other Bluetooth devices are near the person’s smartphone.
Language provides a window into our minds, and disturbances in spoken language (such as using an impoverished vocabulary) can be indicators of mental illness. For example, one research project analysed transcripts of face-to-face interviews with young people at risk of psychosis and found that the use of less complex and more incoherent language predicted subsequent onset of the disorder. The same principle can be applied to online language. The newsfeeds and forums of Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, for example, can provide a rich source of linguistic material for detecting mental health problems. In one study, researchers analysed the previous Facebook posts of patients attending an emergency department. Using this information only, they could reliably predict which patients had a diagnosis of depression in their medical records – with an accuracy approximately matching that of screening surveys. Language suggesting hostility, negative emotions or a preoccupation with the self were all predictors of depression.