Background: Unaddressed early-stage mental health issues, including stress, anxiety, and mild depression, can become a burden for individuals in the long term. Digital phenotyping involves capturing continuous behavioral data via digital smartphone devices to monitor human behavior and can potentially identify milder symptoms before they become serious.
Objective: This systematic literature review aimed to answer the following questions: (1) what is the evidence of the effectiveness of digital phenotyping using smartphones in identifying behavioral patterns related to stress, anxiety, and mild depression? and (2) in particular, which smartphone sensors are found to be effective, and what are the associated challenges?
Methods: We used the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) process to identify 36 papers (reporting on 40 studies) to assess the key smartphone sensors related to stress, anxiety, and mild depression. We excluded studies conducted with nonadult participants (eg, teenagers and children) and clinical populations, as well as personality measurement and phobia studies. As we focused on the effectiveness of digital phenotyping using smartphones, results related to wearable devices were excluded.
Results: We categorized the studies into 3 major groups based on the recruited participants: studies with students enrolled in universities, studies with adults who were unaffiliated to any particular organization, and studies with employees employed in an organization. The study length varied from 10 days to 3 years. A range of passive sensors were used in the studies, including GPS, Bluetooth, accelerometer, microphone, illuminance, gyroscope, and Wi-Fi. These were used to assess locations visited; mobility; speech patterns; phone use, such as screen checking; time spent in bed; physical activity; sleep; and aspects of social interactions, such as the number of interactions and response time. Of the 40 included studies, 31 (78%) used machine learning models for prediction; most others (n=8, 20%) used descriptive statistics. Students and adults who experienced stress, anxiety, or depression visited fewer locations, were more sedentary, had irregular sleep, and accrued increased phone use. In contrast to students and adults, less mobility was seen as positive for employees because less mobility in workplaces was associated with higher performance. Overall, travel, physical activity, sleep, social interaction, and phone use were related to stress, anxiety, and mild depression.
Conclusions: This study focused on understanding whether smartphone sensors can be effectively used to detect behavioral patterns associated with stress, anxiety, and mild depression in nonclinical participants. The reviewed studies provided evidence that smartphone sensors are effective in identifying behavioral patterns associated with stress, anxiety, and mild depression.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/40689 | DOI Listing |
JAMA Netw Open
January 2025
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California San Francisco.
Importance: Mindfulness meditation may improve well-being among employees; however, effects of digital meditation programs are poorly understood.
Objective: To evaluate the effects of digital meditation vs a waiting list condition on general and work-specific stress and whether greater engagement in the intervention moderates these effects.
Design, Setting, And Participants: This randomized clinical trial included a volunteer sample of adults (aged ≥18 years) employed at a large academic medical center who reported mild to moderate stress, had regular access to a web-connected device, and were fluent in English.
J Tradit Complement Med
January 2025
Institute of Food Science and Technology, College of Bioresources and Agriculture, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Background And Aim: (CM) and (AM) are medicinal mushrooms with potential applications in the treatment of mood disorders, including depression and anxiety. While research suggests that both CM and AM possess anti-inflammatory properties and hold potential for treating depression when administered separately, there is limited knowledge about their efficacy when combined in a formula, as well as the underlying mechanism involving the modulation of microglia.
Experimental Procedure: Rats received oral administrations of the low-dose formulation, medium-dose formulation, and high-dose formulation over 28 consecutive days as part of the UCMS protocols.
Objectives: This study aimed to identify the obstacles preventing care of diabetes distress from being integrated into diabetes management, as perceived by both patients and healthcare professionals. By conducting interviews with people with type 2 diabetes (PWD) and physicians, this study aimed to gain insight into the current state of care for diabetes distress in diabetes management and propose targeted interventions to improve patients' overall well-being and treatment outcomes.
Design: This qualitative study used semistructured interviews with patients and physicians.
BMJ Open
December 2024
Clinical Sciences, Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Introduction: Infants born very preterm (VPT, <32 weeks' gestation) are at increased risk for neurodevelopmental impairments including motor, cognitive and behavioural delay. Parents of infants born VPT also have poorer mental health outcomes compared with parents of infants born at term.We have developed an intervention programme called TEDI-Prem (Telehealth for Early Developmental Intervention in babies born very preterm) based on previous research.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Ethnopharmacol
January 2025
Biochemistry Department, Center of Biosciences, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil; Center for Therapeutic Innovation Suely Galdino (NUPIT-SG), Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil. Electronic address:
Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Anxiety and depression are leading causes of disability worldwide, often exacerbated by chronic stress. Schinus terebinthifolia Raddi. has been used in traditional medicine for several purposes.
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