Technologies to Assess Psycho-Behavioural Symptoms

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Abstract
Psycho-behavioural symptoms impact the overall health and quality of life greatly. New digital technology enables us to capture changes in physiology, mobility and social participation caused by psycho-behavioural symptoms in a continuous and passive manner. The long monitoring period that can be reached with this technology can help to detect extreme data points that may not be apparent during short medical visits and also give a more realistic picture of symptom severity in everyday life.

In this chapter, mechanistic and physiological aspects of the most promising digital measures including heart rate and heart rate variability, breathing rate, skin temperature, electrodermal activity and electroencephalography are explained before describing how these measures have already been used to capture depressive and manic symptoms, anxiety, delirium, lack of impulse control and addiction as well as fatigue and sleep disturbances.

Although the research is still at the beginning, digital technology shows great promise to facilitate treatment monitoring in the future. However, more translational research is needed to integrate digital technology into routine mental health care.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-32246-4_8