Smartphone to sense depression

Mobilyze is a new project that is under development by the researchers of Northwestern University. This will create a therapist virtually to monitor the activity of the person and conduct mood assessment.

They are developing different algorithms to different users in order to determine their specific states. These will find out the location of the person, the activity, his/her social context, what he\she is doing currently and also their mood to find if they are depressed or normal.

If the smartphone concludes the person to be depressed, then it will let them intimate their family members and friends. It will send them automated text messages or phone call suggesting the person to call someone or go out somewhere.

Mobilyze will use the sensors that are embedded on the smartphone like accelerometers, Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi. The ultimate idea is to detect the users' mood and help the users to come out of depression without ignoring the symptoms.

This is already tested on eight patients and the researchers claim that it has helped them to ease their depression. These patients said that they were having serious disorder at the beginning and now they are better after the treatment.