Behavioral Health & Tech
The technological advances in the past decade are very well documented. The impact of mental health is also documented in media recently. However, there have not been much significant breakthroughs which have crossed the bridge and linked tech as a tool to help mental health.
Question: How can tech influence behavioral health?
In fact tech has been notoriously linked to affect behavioral health of users in a negative way. Facebook even conducted a borderline unethical experiment to affect user’s mood. Social media has also been linked to depression. Studies are also being conducted to predict conditions like depression based on the social media behavior.
Numbers: Let us look at the numbers in general over the past few decades. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the number of disorders categorized have increased 30% in the last decade. That also means that every individual diagnosed with any disorder has more chances of getting specific help needed.
Which brings back to our previous question of how and when can tech influence behavioral health of an individual.
The motivation for tech giants to enter mental health industry come from the economic impact it may have. Let us look at the annual spending on Mental health below in the chart.
As much has tech been accused of exploiting the dopamine feedback mechanism, there are ways tech can also help manage mental health.
Self-Management Apps: Applications such as Momentum help form habits. HabitBull for android. Other examples include medication reminders, heart rate trackers and sleep management tools.
Apps for Improving Thinking Skills: These applications help improve specific targeted behavior regarding personal individual thoughts. One example is an Anxiety Reliever app. More Anxiety and Depression Association of America approved apps here.
Skill-Training Apps: We have all seen countless ads of Lumosity which was recently ordered to pay $2M for deceiving its users that they can increase their skills to help them at work or school. Despite of the deceptive advertising, applications such as above are helpful to detect Alzheimers.
Illness Management, Supported Care: Human interaction is essential component for treating or addressing any behavioral health concerns. Applications are there that would help you connect to another human being but a creepier way to look at it can also be that the person on the other side can also be a bot.
Passive Symptom Tracking: Sleep, steps, calories, movement patterns, vocal tone, texts, type of texts, number of texts and contents of the information being shared can be interpreted as data to recognize patterns to signal a particular mood or behavioral episodes.
Data Collection: User Data is extremely important in predicting behavioral health of the participant. One particular example of collecting targeted and comprehensive data is Brighton Study where researchers collected information from participants to assess and predict specific behavioral disorders.
Besides the above points, it is also significant to note the organizations/Industries pursuing data regarding mental health:
- E-commerce
- Insurance
- Big Pharma
- Government Organizations
- Big Tech
