Researchers Developing Smartphone Mental Health Surveillance App For University Students: iSeeBy Nicholas West Most people now seem resigned to the surveillance of our communications devices, which have become so intertwined with modern efficiency, economics and knowledge that there are real tradeoffs when choosing a fully opt-out lifestyle. Wearable gadgets add a new layer still, and are being bought into at record pace, thus donating the information that isnt already being stolen. However, it might be our health information that is the most tempting, offering up potentially the most intrusive window yet into our everyday lives. A group of university researchers studying the rising levels of depression in university students have just released their latest concept for a mental health tracking app called iSee that, in their words, will enhance counseling services with mobile technology and big data analytics. The system works with students who voluntarily want to have their daily movements tracked in order to provide data that might offer clues to a computer algorithm that can detect if they are experiencing signs of depression. The entire article is posted below with my highlights, but Id first like to offer some additional background to this type of technology and why it very well could move from voluntary to mandatory over time. In July of 2104 I covered a development by researchers at Tel Aviv University who stated that a Smartphone App May Revolutionize Mental Health Treatment. The following excerpts from the press release were highlighted as some very stark writing on the wall. Full press release available HERE Almost exactly one year later, a group of researchers proclaimed that the standard smartphone can accurately detect general depression with nearly 90% accuracy, merely based on GPS location data and usage information. Researchers seemed preliminarily overjoyed, in my view, from the results obtained from just 40 participants, but it is worth noting what their objective and conclusions state: Objective: The objective of this study was to explore the detection of daily-life behavioral markers using mobile phone global positioning systems (GPS) and usage sensors, and their use in identifying depressive symptom severity. Conclusions: Features extracted from mobile phone sensor data, including GPS and phone usage, provided behavioral markers that were strongly related to depressive symptom severity. While these findings must be replicated in a larger study among participants with confirmed clinical symptoms, they suggest that phone sensors offer numerous clinical opportunities, including continuous monitoring of at-risk populations with little patient burden and interventions that can provide just-in-time outreach. (emphasis added) Source and full release HERE Beyond the mountain of technical details, the upshot is that the complex movements, thoughts and desires of an individual human being are being replaced by an algorithmic overlay of sensor feed results that can be transmitted to centralized professionals who apparently know you better than yourself or your family and friends. Did you know, for example, that the average smartphone user time for a depressed person is 68 minutes? Did you know that 17 minutes makes you normal? Using terms like location variance clustering circadian movement and transition time is the standard operating procedure for reductionists and technocrats everywhere whose #1 trait is what Jon Rappoport has called OTO The Obsession to Organize: OTO speaks of a bottomless fear that somewhere, someone might be living free. The presumption of a baseline, incontestable normal level of mental health speaks to the need for power structures and the medical establishment to seek as many diagnoses as possible to corral and monetize populations deemed to be wandering too far off the plantation. And this is where things can go from having a genuine concern for the well-being of others to labels and categorizations that reduce natural rights and the very essence of what it means to be a human being. Do you like to disconnect from the virtual matrix for a while? Take a stay-cation? Do you generally enjoy your home and family more than social carousing, mall strolling, and indiscriminate consumerism? Youve been deemed NOT AVERAGE Red Flag in Sector 12. And the political framework already has been created for the government to impose itself into the health lives of every individual. As Jon Rappoport has highlighted, embedded in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), it states quite clearly the value of data obtained from gadgets and consumer behavior, and portends how government might mandate changes in the near future. Health plans, integrated delivery systems, and other health care organizations (HCOs) increasingly channel their patients to interventions based in part on what they deduce from predictive models that have traditionally been run against databases of administrative claims. In this arena, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) [Obamacare] is likely to exert a profound effect. a growing number of health care expertssee predictive modeling as an opportunity to prevent [disease] complications, control [hospital] readmissions, generate more precise diagnoses and treatments, predict risk, and control costs for a more diverse array of population segments than previously attempted New data streams will become available to providers, payers, and government as EHRs draw from a broader array of data to create more complete insight into patients and the care delivery processAs HCOs gain access to data from more varied sources, such as health risk assessments, behavioral assessments, laboratory results, and pharmacy prescriptions (filled and unfilled), the impact of predictive modeling will increase. (emphasis added) Source: More Data in Health Care Will Enable Predictive Modeling Advances. Managed Care Finally, if any doubts remain about how slippery this slope has become, listen to the following statement from David Mohr director of the Orwellian Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine (and, by the way, part of the latest research posted in the article that follows): The significance of this is we can detect if a person has depressive symptoms and the severity of those symptoms without asking them any questions We now have an objective measure of behavior related to depression. And were detecting it passively. Phones can provide data unobtrusively and with no effort on the part of the user. What a dream effortless transmission of what makes you tick all you have to do is wait for the Intervention Team to arrive. And now, as youll read below, they are aiming for the youth the struggling university student. Of course the central question is not addressed here: Why are so many students depressed? Could it be the massive debt they need to incur in order to participate in this normal society? Could it be the mere activity of running the gauntlet that is the modern college experience which, in my view, creates neuroses with its increasingly dominant focus on political correctness, safe spaces, and whatever other social engineering programs are being touted outside the boundaries of truly rigorous study and devotion to knowledge? Im sure it couldnt possibly be that the combination of debt, social stress, engineered stripping of identity and individualism and now being virtually stalked and judged in real-time about their abnormal mental state finishes only with the likelihood that, after such a trial, the degree that has been slavishly pursued could be utterly worthless. Depression is the leading mental health issue on college campuses in the U.S. In 2015, a survey of more than 90,000 students at 108 American colleges and universities found that during the previous year, more than one-third of them had felt so depressed at some point that it was difficult to function. More than two-thirds had felt hopeless in the preceding academic year. Todays college students are dealing with depression at an alarmingly high rate, and are increasingly seeking help from on-campus mental health services. Depression is also an underlying cause of other common problems on college campuses, including alcohol and substance abuse, eating disorders, self-injury, suicide and dropping out of school. But university counseling centers, the primary sources for students to get mental health care, are struggling to meet this rising demand. First, it can take a long time for clinicians to gain a full picture of what students are experiencing: Depressed students accounts of their symptoms are often inaccurate and incomplete. In addition, budget constraints and limited office hours mean the number of clinicians on campus has not grown, and in some cases has shrunk, despite increasing demand. There simply are not enough university clinicians available to serve every student and few, if any, at critical times like nights and weekends. The number of students on counseling waiting lists doubled from 2010 to 2012. This can leave students waiting long periods without help. In the worst cases, this can have lifelong or life-ending consequences. Using mobile technology for mental illness diagnosis and treatment is becoming a hot research topic nowadays because of the pervasiveness of mobile devices and their behavior-tracking capabilities. Building on others work, we have found a way to enhance counseling services with mobile technology and big data analytics. It can help students and clinicians alike, by offering a new tool for assessing depression that may shed increased light on a condition that is challenging to study. We are developing a system for tackling this campus mental health crisis, called iSee. When its ready to be deployed, students who participate in the program will need to carry a smartphone and a smartwatch. Data collected by those devices are transmitted to, and analyzed by, a computer system. This lets the relatively few counselors keep better track of more students extending service to more students in need. The smartphone and smartwatch have several built-in sensors: These sensors capture many of the students daily activities that can help indicate mental well-being, including walking or other physical exercise, sleeping habits, social interaction and how often they go to class or local businesses or whether they stay home or in a dorm room all day long. iSee can offset the inherent inaccuracies and incompleteness in patients self-reporting of their depression. It can even observe symptoms students themselves dont notice or think to mention to a counselor. And because the data are continually collected, it can identify moments of vulnerability and resilience and provide a picture of a students progress over time. That can help not only monitor but also treat depression. Our work builds on the algorithms we have designed that analyze mobile device data to detect depression. In a 2015 study, we showed that the severity of a persons depression can be predicted by monitoring their GPS locations and how often they use their phones: People with more severe depression symptoms tended to move from place to place less and stay at home more than people with fewer depression symptoms or none at all. The movements of more severely depressed people also tended to be less regular, and were more likely to use their phones frequently and for longer durations. For iSee, we will incorporate data from the other sensors, translating the raw measurements into models of how the students are behaving. Then iSee will look for behavior patterns that can relate to mental health problems such as staying home all the time or getting irregular sleep. By sharing this information with both the patient and the counselor, iSee will help better describe, and more accurately portray the severity of, an individuals symptoms. A mental health counselor can see when a students behavior suggests a change in their depression. Mi Zhang and Jingbo Meng, CC BY-ND In addition, iSee can sense in real time when a students behavior matches certain symptoms of depression such as being socially isolated for three days. If that happens, the app can automatically deliver in-the-moment therapies to help, without relying on the patient, or even the clinician, to initiate. For example, if iSee notices a socially isolated person is alone at home on a sunny Saturday afternoon, it might suggest calling some friends or going out for a walk. That is exactly the sort of suggestion a counselor would make. Unfortunately, counselors usually can only make these suggestions in hindsight during therapy sessions. The smartphone can provide that assistance in the moment when help is needed. By finding ways the many sensors on smartphones and smartwatches can shed light on peoples daily lives and habits, and by analyzing that data in ways that highlight potential mental health problems, we can help college students stay healthier and reduce the workload on overtaxed professionals at the same time. Mi Zhang, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University; David Mohr, Director, Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies (CBITs) Professor of Preventive Medicine (Behavioral Medicine), Medical Social Sciences and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Northwestern University, and Jingbo Meng, Assistant Professor of Communication, Michigan State University This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Nicholas West writes for selfnewsPost.com. This article can be freely republished in part or in full with author attribution and source link. Image Credit Scary for sure. There is no doubt about it. On the other had this will lead to everyone taking gender studies to be put in a padded room or safe space as there called on campus. Its going to monitor their minds? Where is that? Lets see.replace observant and caring adults, such as parents, counselors and teachers, with more AI machines? If this is really necessary, then we might as well toss in the towel. First we have medical doctors and schools giving heavy duty anti-depressant and psychotropic drugs to tens of millions of children from ages 3 to 18, now we have that being monitored by robots? No wonder parents have abdicated their roles. With all the drugs and robots doing the job, parents can spend more time on their cell phones and Apps. Mindless zombies with mindless zombie children. If all the technology stops working then we will see the zombies. Lost in the space left by these Apps and other control devices. What is the purpose of being here? To have a love affair with a cell phone? or to grow in other ways? Big pharma is really starting to get desperate for business here. 