Development of an Emotion-Sensitive mHealth Approach for Mood-State Recognition in Bipolar Disorder.

Henning Daus,Richard De Klerk,Ronny Egeler,Wilhelm Stork,Matthias Backenstrass,Timon Bloecher

doi:10.2196/14267

Abstract

Internet- and mobile-based approaches have become increasingly significant to psychological research in the field of bipolar disorders. While research suggests that emotional aspects of bipolar disorders are substantially related to the social and global functioning or the suicidality of patients, these aspects have so far not sufficiently been considered within the context of mobile-based disease management approaches. As a multiprofessional research team, we have developed a new and emotion-sensitive assistance system, which we have adapted to the needs of patients with bipolar disorder. Next to the analysis of self-assessments, third-party assessments, and sensor data, the new assistance system analyzes audio and video data of these patients regarding their emotional content or the presence of emotional cues. In this viewpoint, we describe the theoretical and technological basis of our emotion-sensitive approach and do not present empirical data or a proof of concept. To our knowledge, the new assistance system incorporates the first mobile-based approach to analyze emotional expressions of patients with bipolar disorder. As a next step, the validity and feasibility of our emotion-sensitive approach must be evaluated. In the future, it might benefit diagnostic, prognostic, or even therapeutic purposes and complement existing systems with the help of new and intuitive interaction models.

Highlights

With a prevalence of more than 1%, bipolar disorder is one of the most common mental disorders worldwide [1]
The aspiring mobile Health (mHealth) approach benefits a consistent self-monitoring of patients with bipolar disorder [11,12,17,18,19] and allows for mood-recognition approaches based on automatically assessed sensor data [20,21,23,24,25,26,27]
Our new assistance system incorporates some of the well-known components of mHealth systems for bipolar disorder and combines them with the innovative features of third-party assessments and the analysis of emotional expressions

Summary

Introduction

With a prevalence of more than 1%, bipolar disorder is one of the most common mental disorders worldwide [1]. The depressive and (hypo) manic episodes can have extensive social and economic consequences for patients with bipolar disorder and their families [3]. With the proceeding technological development and the digitalization of the health care system, increasing attention has recently been paid to internet- and mobile-based interventions in the field of bipolar disorders [8,9,10]. Internet-based interventions, such as psychoeducational tutorials, can help to reach a great number of patients. Mobile-based approaches often assess real-time information about illness activity or deliver time-sensitive messages to patients in an ambulatory setting. We developed a new mobile-based assistance system for bipolar disorder. In this viewpoint, we describe the theoretical and technological basis of our approach

Objectives

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion