Will These Apps Be Able to Detect Mental Illness?

Psychology  

Fitness apps are very popular for helping you get your body ready for the beach, helping you loose weight and get the most out of your workout. Now another category of apps is also coming online helping people cope and deal with their mental health as well.

Mental health is one of the most important aspects of your overall health and wellness, but it is often overlooked in favor of physical health. That is why you can go to any local department store and find dozens of different fitness trackers and heart rate monitors designed to help you reach your peak physical form, but not one tracker designed to help keep track of mental illnesses — until now.

The Impact of Mental Illness

As of 2013, 48.3 million adults in the U.S. have been diagnosed and are living with some form of mental illness. That’s 18.5 percent of the population, if you want to do the math. Of that 18.5 percent, only around 13.4 percent actually received treatment for their mental illness.

Normal mental illness treatment regimens include medication, therapy and if necessary, care in inpatient or outpatient facilities.

These mental illnesses have a dramatic impact on the daily lives of those who persevere through the dramatic highs and sinking lows that accompany them. Major Depressive Disorder, for example, is the leading cause of disability claims for younger Americans, aged between 15 and 44.

The one thing that most doctors and treatment facilities lack is data. Instead, they often base diagnoses on short-term observations and ivinformation from the patients themselves. Cambridge Cognition is a London-based company that hopes to change that.

Cambridge Cognition

Cambridge Cognition specializes in computerized neurophysical assessment. For those of us without a degree in medicine, this means that the company uses a series of computerized tests, known as CANTAB for Cambridge Neurophysical Test Automated Battery, to assess cognitive function — basically, this helps them to understand how the mind works.

What does this have to do with fitness trackers like the ones mentioned above? Cambridge Cognition is working with tech startup Ctrl Group to create a wearable mental health tracker that works to help gather valuable data about mental illness symptoms that can change dramatically from day to day.

Related articles

• 5 Motorcycle Gadgets Straight from Science Fiction 
• Breakthrough Technique Gives Unprecedented View Inside The Brain 
• Researchers Develop Neuromorphic Chip With Cognitive Abilities 

The Why

The big question on your mind is probably “Why do we need mental health trackers?” The answer is simple — because there are people who need them.

Would you know how many steps you’ve taken in a day without the Fitbit securely strapped to your wrist? Chances are strong that your answer is no. The Fitbit allows you to take control of your physical health by putting the data into terms that are easy to understand. Additionally, it helps you to see patterns in your activity that you otherwise might have missed by creating a record of them that you can access from your smart phone or other Bluetooth-equipped device.

Now can you see how a mental health tracker could help someone who is suffering from a mental illness?

Not only does the device help to keep track of symptoms that a person may be experiencing, it quantifies those symptoms to help people learn to understand and cope with their mental illnesses in a beneficial way.

Additionally, these mobile devices have the potential to be tools for mental healthcare providers because they can provide a broader picture of how mental illness symptoms can affect a patient on any given day.

Conclusions

With the number of mental illness diagnoses growing every year and the stigma that follows mental illness preventing people from seeking treatment, a tool like a mental health tracker could be just the thing to help both healthcare professionals and mental illness sufferers.

Having a clearer picture of the symptoms for a particular mental illness can help healthcare professionals treat the illnesses. Having a tool that can take an intangible thing like a mental illness and make it understandable is a godsend for people who suffer from these illnesses, and the steps that Ctrl Group and Cambridge Cognition are taking toward making it a reality are definitely steps in the right direction.

TOP IMAGE SOURCE  CTRL Group

By Kayla Matthews

Embed

Author Bio - Kayla Matthews is a technology journalist and blogger, as well as editor of ProductivityBytes.com. Follow Kayla on Facebook and Twitter to read all of her latest posts.