WASHINGTON (TIP): Your smartphone may tell if you are depressed, stressed or lonely, thanks to a first-of-itskind app that automatically tracks users’ mental health, academic performance and behaviour. The StudentLife app, which compares students’ happiness, stress, depression and loneliness to their academic performance, also may be used in the general population —for example, to monitor mental health, trigger intervention and improve productivity in workplace employees. “The StudentLife app is able to continuously make mental health assessment 24/7, opening the way for a new form of assessment,” said Dartmouth College computer science Professor Andrew Campbell, the study’s senior author. “This is a very important and exciting breakthrough,” said Campbell. The researchers built an Android app that monitored readings from smartphone sensors carried by 48 students during a 10-week term to assess their mental health (depression, loneliness, stress), academic performance (grades across all their classes, term GPA and cumulative GPA) and behavioural trends. They used computational method and machine learning algorithms on the phone to assess sensor data and make higher level inferences.
New smartphone app can tell your state of mind
