HIGHLIGHTS
- The app tracks mental health by studying your phone usage
- Researchers develop PROSIT app that tracks mental health by studying phone usage
- Exploring mental health providers’ interest in using the web and mobile-based tools in their practices
So keeping an eye on your physical fitness with the help of your smartphone or smart wearables has become old news till now. Therefore, scientists and developers are now trying to pay more attention to mental health. As a result, we now have an app that can track your mental health by analyzing the use of your smartphone.
Researchers at Dalhousie University have developed an app called PROSIT that can tell if you are showing signs of anxiety and depression by monitoring your phone usage including features like call frequency, music taste, fitness, sleep, etc. Easy to track, it also takes hold of some small details like its typing speed and force.
Users can also add additional data. For example, they have the option of recording and uploading a 90-second audio clip, which describes the most happening event of the week and can also report their feelings on a scale of 1 to 5.
Researchers are testing the app with 300 users and half of those patients are trying to overcome mental illnesses.
Now, although the idea of an app is very useful, monitoring smartphone usage can reveal some personal information of users. So, there are obvious privacy concerns involved in tracking your online activity.
However, according to the researchers, the team is working on the app to reduce users’ privacy concerns. Currently, users are required to sign a consent form, and according to researchers, the data is supposedly in a safe place.
Apart from this, this app can prove useful in helping people understand some things. Saying that it does not promise to give us a clear and definite picture. But I think it can turn the tide in the fight for mental well-being.