Internet-delivered psychological treatments (IDPT) are seen as an effective and scalable pathway to improving the accessibility of mental healthcare. Within this context, treatment adherence is an especially pertinent challenge to address due to the reduced interaction between healthcare professionals and patients. In parallel, the increase in regulations surrounding the use of personal data, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), makes data minimization a core consideration for real-world implementation of IDPTs. Consequently, this work proposes a Self-Attention-based deep learning approach to perform automatic adherence forecasting, while only relying on minimally sensitive login/logout-timestamp data. This approach was tested on a dataset containing 342 patients undergoing Guided Internet-delivered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (G-ICBT) treatment. Of these 342 patients, 101 ( ∼ 30%) were considered non-adherent (dropout) based on the adherence definition used in this work (i.e. at least eight connections to the platform lasting more than a minute over 56 days). The proposed model achieved over 70% average balanced accuracy, after only 20 out of the 56 days ( ∼ 1/3) of the treatment had elapsed. This study demonstrates that automatic adherence forecasting for G-ICBT, is achievable using only minimally sensitive data, thus facilitating the implementation of such tools within real-world IDPT platforms.

Recovering from serious illness involves a bodily and psychosocial reorientation in everyday life. Survivors of gynecological cancer often experience bodily changes, fear of cancer recurrence, and changes in sexual health. This paper explores how we can use audiovisual narratives based on experiences of gynecological cancer survival in the design of an online intervention. From a typology of cancer survival, we designed three audiovisual narratives in an experience-centered design process involving gynecological cancer survivors. The narratives were evaluated by 10 participants formerly treated for gynecological cancer. In a thematic analysis, we explore how these narratives set the stage for identification and reflection by being experienced as relatable, provoking, and realistic. Finally, we discuss how the survivors’ experience of the narratives can be construed as meaningful, and how accounts of experiences can be included in a design process to create narrative content for online interventions.

Nowadays, virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) is suggested as a way to treat social anxiety disorder (SAD), including the more specific fear of public speaking (FoPs). The major advantage of using VRET is that the virtual environment represents something in between in vitro and in vivo exposure, and therefore, lower the threshold for engaging in exposure tasks. In this paper, we present a VR system for addressing public speaking anxiety. Furthermore, wireless wristband was worn to detect the heartbeat of the participant in real-time and head movement data were collected from the VR headset. In initial experiments, we use the movement from the VR headset to predict heart rate with the goal of being able to get heart rate from VR equipment without the need for additional equipment allowing larger follow up studies.

Virtual reality (VR) applications for exposure therapy predominantly use computer-generated imagery to create controlled environments in which users can be exposed to their fears. Creating 3D animations, however, is demanding and time-consuming. This paper presents a participatory approach for prototyping VR scenarios that are enabled by 360° video and grounded in lived experiences. We organized a participatory workshop with adolescents to prototype such scenarios, consisting of iterative phases of ideation, storyboarding, live-action plays recorded by a 360° camera, and group evaluation. Through an analysis of the participants' interactions, we outline how they worked to design prototypes that depict situations relevant to those with a fear of public speaking. Our analysis also explores how participants used their experiences and reflections as resources for design. Six clinical psychologists evaluated the prototypes from the workshop and concluded they were viable therapeutic tools, emphasizing the immersive, realistic experience they presented. We argue that our approach makes the design of VR scenarios more accessible.

Wearable sensors measuring different parts of people's activity are a common technology nowadays. Data created using these devices holds a lot of potential besides measuring the quantity of daily steps or calories burned, since continuous recordings of heart rate and activity levels usually are collected. Furthermore, there is an increasing awareness in the field of psychiatry on how these activity data relates to various mental health issues such as changes in mood, personality, inability to cope with daily problems or stress and withdrawal from friends and activities. In this paper we present the analysis of a unique dataset containing sensor data collected from patients suffering from depression. The dataset contains motor activity recordings of 23 unipolar and bipolar depressed patients and 32 healthy controls. We apply machine learning to classify patients into depressed and nondepressed. For evaluation of the algorithms, leave one patient out validation is performed. The best results achieved are an F1 score of 0.73 and a MCC of 0.44. The overall findings show that sensor data contains information that can be used to determine the depression status of a person.

Wearable sensors measuring different parts of people's activity are a common technology nowadays. In research, data collected using these devices also draws attention. Nevertheless, datasets containing sensor data in the field of medicine are rare. Often, data is non-public and only results are published. This makes it hard for other researchers to reproduce and compare results or even collaborate. In this paper we present a unique dataset containing sensor data collected from patients suffering from depression. The dataset contains motor activity recordings of 23 unipolar and bipolar depressed patients and 32 healthy controls. For each patient we provide sensor data over several days of continuous measuring and also some demographic data. The severity of the patients' depressive state was labeled using ratings done by medical experts on the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS). In this respect, the here presented dataset can be useful to explore and understand the association between depression and motor activity better. By making this dataset available, we invite and enable interested researchers the possibility to tackle this challenging and important societal problem.

Personal and ubiquitous sensing technologies such as smartphones have allowed the continuous collection of data in an unobtrusive manner. Machine learning methods have been applied to continuous sensor data to predict user contextual information such as location, mood, physical activity, etc. Recently, there has been a growing interest in leveraging ubiquitous sensing technologies for mental health care applications, thus, allowing the automatic continuous monitoring of different mental conditions such as depression, anxiety, stress, and so on. This paper surveys recent research works in mental health monitoring systems (MHMS) using sensor data and machine learning. We focused on research works about mental disorders/conditions such as: depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, stress, etc. We propose a classification taxonomy to guide the review of related works and present the overall phases of MHMS. Moreover, research challenges in the field and future opportunities are also discussed.