Would you trust a smartphone to diagnose depression?

A symptom, in medical language, is an elementary phenomenon that indicates a state of illness. If we have a fever, our temperature will rise, we might feel a sore throat, heavy muscles, and a stuffy nose. If we have some back or neck issues, we will feel pain, nerve tension, nausea, and dizziness. However, not all symptoms are immediately evident and tangible. We're talking, for example, about symptoms of mental distress, which are very complex to identify and recognize. The task of doing so should theoretically fall on psychologists, psychiatrists, or therapists, but even here the matter becomes complicated and blurred. Sometimes, when we go, we lie, we are not clear-headed, we consciously or unconsciously muddy the waters. Sometimes, we can't even start a therapy path, we don't know how to seek help, we can't afford it, or we live in areas where counseling centers are not active. Do you know what is always active, though? Our smartphone.

Diagnosing Depression Through Your iPhone

Following this principle, and aiming to make mental health care more accessible, researchers and startups have recently created AI-based apps that can learn to detect changes and behaviors related to depression. Only a few are already available for download, but some passive data collection systems are already used by platforms to flag potential crises and send mental health alerts, hidden in the terms we never read. For example, Instagram can send alerts asking how we are and suggesting we call someone. In short, new diagnostic systems are in our near future, and they could significantly change our relationship with mental health and depression in particular. Are they a good idea overall? That's another story.

How Smartphones and Startups Detect Depression

How is depression diagnosed? Psychological discipline says this condition, at least in the United States, is diagnosable if the patient exhibits at least five symptoms for at least two consecutive weeks. However, according to Nicholas Jacobson, this diagnostic system is limited. The professor of Data Biomedical Sciences and Psychiatry at Dartmouth College believes that focusing only on stable symptoms is a mistake. Instead, we should monitor "the daily changes experienced by people with depression, because symptoms change rapidly and traditional treatments are very slow." How? Through our smartphones, which in most cases can already record our steps, heart rate, sleep patterns, and social media usage. These data could be used to train Artificial Intelligence, making it capable of predicting when your mood is about to drop, and thus also understanding if something is wrong. An app called MoodCapture, for example, uses the front camera to take selfies while the user answers questions about their mood three times a day. The AI then correlates the responses with the photos to deduce the state of mental health, mainly based on facial changes.

The Dangers of Smartphone Diagnosis: Data Usage and Trust

Can we trust them? The development of these apps has not yet reached the market, and many of these tools are used as diaries or behind the scenes by medical studies to facilitate and clinically support diagnoses. The doubts about these developments mainly concern data management. Companies could abuse the highly sensitive data collected from people in vulnerable moments, and the regulations to stop this practice are still few and too generic. In short, they must earn our trust first and our consent afterward. Munmun De Choudhury, Associate Professor at the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, believes that any digital mental health platform can be ethical, "to the extent that people have the ability to consent to its use," she emphasized, also highlighting the importance of understandable terms of service, which she believes should be accessible and readable by everyone.

So, What? Our Conclusions

Despite everything, and despite the undeniable advantages of this approach, especially in extreme cases, and admitting that—unfortunately—taking care of one's mental health is a privilege reserved for those who can afford it, we advise caution. Mental health is complex, nuanced, and extremely important. Taking care of it properly, talking to professionals, and relying on competent people is an integral part of the diagnosis and management process. The solution to the significant gaps in international healthcare systems may not be to place ourselves in the hands of Artificial Intelligence, startups, and new technologies, which remain private and profit-oriented, but to fight for a better, public, and fair healthcare system and for less stigmatization of these disorders. And if technology helps, all the better.