Digital phenotyping for mental health of college students: a clinical review

Abstract

Experiencing continued growth in demand for mental health services among students, colleges are seeking digital solutions to increase access to care as classes shift to remote virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using smartphones to capture real-time symptoms and behaviours related to mental illnesses, digital phenotyping offers a practical tool to help colleges remotely monitor and assess mental health and provide more customised and responsive care. This narrative review of 25 digital phenotyping studies with college students explored how this method has been deployed, studied and has impacted mental health outcomes. We found the average duration of studies to be 42 days and the average enrolled to be 81 participants. The most common sensor-based streams collected included location, accelerometer and social information and these were used to inform behaviours such as sleep, exercise and social interactions. 52% of the studies included also collected smartphone survey in some form and these were used to assess mood, anxiety and stress among many other outcomes. The collective focus on data that construct features related to sleep, activity and social interactions indicate that this field is already appropriately attentive to the primary drivers of mental health problems among college students. While the heterogeneity of the methods of these studies presents no reliable target for mobile devices to offer automated help—the feasibility across studies suggests the potential to use these data today towards personalising care. As more unified digital phenotyping research evolves and scales to larger sample sizes, student mental health centres may consider integrating these data into their clinical practice for college students.

Stress Perceived by University Health Sciences Students, 1 Year after COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Another point raised is that the quantity and frequency of social interactions might be an indicator of clinical predictions of social anxiety, isolation, depression and stress [ 27 ].…”

Ethical Development of Digital Phenotyping Tools for Mental Health Applications: Delphi Study

“…For example, data on pulse rate, finger taps, or voice features can be tracked using an individual's smartphone and then analyzed to measure behavior, physiological states, and cognitive functioning [6][7][8][9]. As the field of digital phenotyping has evolved, projects increasingly include multiple data streams in the analyses, such as data from electronic health records (EHRs), facial recognition technology, ambient sensors, biological scans, or genomic information [10][11][12][13]. The proper terminology for these techniques is still under debate, with terms such as computational behavioral analysis [14], continuous measurement [15], or personal sensing also being applied to similar research approaches that involve continuous monitoring of behavioral data gathered from sensors or digital sources [16,17].…”

Digital Phenotyping in Livestock Farming

“…Phenotyping has played an important role in assessing mental health concerns, and historically it was conducted through experience-based sampling methods that depended on human compliance [4,5]. In recent years, the challenges posed by constant compliance and active participation have been overcome through the use of digital phenotyping.…”