In the mood

Abstract

Mental illness is a significant and growing problem throughout the world. Many mental health problems have their root in childhood, and early intervention is recommended.Engaging young people in psychotherapeutic activities is challenging, and treatment adherence is often poor. This paper presents a series of studies carried out as part of the development of a mobile and online symptom tracking tool for adolescents with mental health problems. Teenagers use the system to record symptoms on their mobile phones and can view this information in a clinical setting with a therapist. We focus on a clinical pilot of the system with ten users in public mental health clinics. As well as indicating that the mobile diary tool can increase client adherence to therapeutic activities, the study yields insight into the factors influencing the success of the design and informs the design of other systems to be used as adjuncts to therapy.

Teaching and Developing Social and Emotional Skills with Technology

“…The power of mobile technology to prompt and collect such emotional reflection on-the-go presents opportunities to further extend such emotional awareness into other settings, and a number of projects have already explored related techniques in various contexts in the existing HCI work. In one such example, Matthews and Doherty [2011] developed a ubiquitous application to support emotional awareness training for psychotherapy clients, using mobile phones to elicit and support reflection on current emotional state regularly over the course of the day. As part of other initial work, Munson et al [2010] integrated the Three Good Things, a well-known positive psychology intervention, into a social networking site, meshing it with users' daily habits around these sites, and thus facilitating social and emotional awareness through technology.…”

“…As one option, researchers have argued for the value of presenting ambiguous cues, which can nudge people to engage, interpret, and reflect on their experiences (e.g., Boehner et al [2005], Gaver et al [2003]). For example, AffectiveDiary ] inspired users' reflection by presenting cues based on a combination of sensor data, and other projects use movement to explore emotional experiences [Mentis et al 2014]. Early HCI work also suggests that systems could draw on sensor data to track and visualise users' emotional changes over time (as inferred from the sensor data), possibly helping the users draw out patterns that they may not notice otherwise.…”

“…In particular, even if some aspects cannot be reliably and fully interpreted by technology, it might still be possible and in many cases actually preferable (cf. [Boehner et al 2005;Mentis et al 2014]) to support the users by providing "reasonably" preprocessed data they can view, interpret, and explore. Again, although such research questions will be inspired by the work with SEL, they are likely to have wider repercussions also in other areas such as HCI than those directly focused on social and emotional learning.…”

An Embodied Conversational Agent for Unguided Internet-Based Cognitive Behavior Therapy in Preventative Mental Health: Feasibility and Acceptability Pilot Trial

“…In recent years, internet-based CBT (ICBT) and computerized CBT have increasingly been used as a means to fill the service gap and resolve various problems related to mental health, such as bipolar disorder [4,5], anxiety disorder [6], depression [7], treatment adherence [8], and common mental health problems [9]. According to reviews published by Andersson [10,11], therapist-guided ICBT is standard, and while its efficacy in the three characteristic areas of depression, anxiety, and physical symptoms has been shown to be almost equivalent to that of face-to-face CBT, the issues of lower efficacy and higher dropout rates of unguided ICBT than those of guided ICBT have been raised.…”

An Embodied Conversational Agent for Unguided Internet-Based Cognitive Behavior Therapy in Preventative Mental Health: Feasibility and Acceptability Pilot Trial (Preprint)

“…The former involves issues of privacy and cost concerning service provision, while the latter deals with the stigma surrounding psychiatry and mental illness, as well as preferences regarding methods of accessing support. In recent years, internet-based CBT (hereafter iCBT) and computerized CBT have increasingly been used as a means to fill the service gap and resolve various problems related to mental health, such as bipolar disorder [4,5], anxiety disorder [6], depression [7], treatment adherence [8], and common mental health problems [9].According to Andersson's review [10,11], therapist-guided iCBT is standard, and while its efficacy in the three characteristic areas of depression, anxiety, and physical symptoms has been shown to be almost equivalent to that of face-to-face CBT, the issues of lower efficacy and higher dropout rates of unguided iCBT than those of guided iCBT have been raised. Even in a systematic review of depression-related self-help smart-phone applications conducted by Huguet et al [12], it became apparent that there are no suitable, evidenced-based CBT and behavioral action (BA) applications, that is, no unguided iCBT applications are available, despite the large societal demand for and number of applications available.…”