UbiComp and Mental Health: Moving Towards Impact
Mental illness remains an urgent global issue. Today, more than 750 million individuals worldwide suffer from a mental illness, and this prevalence continues to grow. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of individuals suffering from major depressive and anxiety disorders increased by 27% and 25% respectively. Mental illness has a devastating impact on individuals experiencing symptoms, including an increased risk of disability and premature mortality from preventable, comorbid physical conditions and suicide.
Despite these known challenges, symptoms of mental illness often remain undetected and untreated. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reports that more than half of the individuals in the U.S. living with a mental health condition do not receive any treatment.
Further, our current healthcare systems are largely reactive — that is, patients typically only receive treatment after symptom onset, contributing to the aforementioned consequences to both individuals and society.
The promise of ubiquitous technologies…
Ubiquitous technologies have long promised an opportunity for early detection and intervention on symptoms of mental illness. Sensors embedded in these technologies can approximate behavioral patterns associated with mental health and well-being. We can leverage these patterns to deliver interventions when they are needed and patients are most likely to engage in care, reducing symptoms early-on and improving long-term outcomes.
…has not been realized in mental healthcare
Yet, despite this promise, after more than a decade of research in Ubiquitous computing for mental health, the adoption of Ubiquitous technologies in mental healthcare remains low. Recent work in the field highlights that there are a number of challenges towards using these technologies to improve mental health and well-being, including issues of technology fragmentation, generalizability, reproducibility, ethics and privacy, and lack of a clear pathway towards implementation.
The 2023 workshop — an opportunity to connect and move towards impact
In this year’s workshop, we wish to foster discussion between academics, industry professionals, and clinical practitioners to chart a research agenda that realizes the opportunities for Ubiquitous technologies to positively impact mental health and well-being. Our main goal is to provide attendees with opportunities to network and discuss current or future projects towards these goals. To enable this, we will offer multiple opportunities for 1–1 and group discussions, leveraging the unique experience afforded by an in-person workshop.
In addition, we are excited to have two keynote speakers join us for the workshop, including Dr. Trina Histon, VP of Clinical Product Strategy at Woebot Health, and Dr. Jakob Bardram, Professor of Computer Science at the Technical University of Denmark. Dr.’s Histon and Bardram both have unique perspectives on innovating and implementing digital technologies in mental healthcare.
Finally, we’re excited to invite authors of accepted workshop papers to present their work. This year’s papers cover a wide array of topics from novel ECG and mobile sensing technologies, the development and discussion of challenges towards implementing these technologies in too often overlooked communities, and remaining implementation challenges including privacy, generalizability, and device power consumption. Attendees and authors will be given opportunities to provide and receive feedback on these papers during the workshop.
Join us!
We would love to have you join us at this year’s workshop. You can register for the conference and workshop on the UbiComp/ISWC 2023 website, and learn more about the workshop on our website.
