Digital phenotyping of student mental health during COVID-19: an observational study of 100 college students

Abstract

Objective: This study assessed the feasibility of capturing smartphone based digital phenotyping data in college students during the COVID-19 pandemic with the goal of understanding how digital biomarkers of behavior correlate with mental health. Participants: Participants were 100 students enrolled in 4-year universities. Methods: Each participant attended a virtual visit to complete a series of gold-standard mental health assessments, and then used a mobile app for 28 days to complete mood assessments and allow for passive collection of GPS, accelerometer, phone call, and screen time data. Students completed another virtual visit at the end of the study to collect a second round of mental health assessments. Results: In-app daily mood assessments were strongly correlated with their corresponding gold standard clinical assessment. Sleep variance among students was correlated to depression scores (ρ = .28) and stress scores (ρ = .27). Conclusions: Digital Phenotyping among college students is feasible on both an individual and a sample level. Studies with larger sample sizes are necessary to understand population trends, but there are practical applications of the data today.

Keywords:

• Experimental design
• mental health

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Jeremy Wertheimer for his generous support of this project.

Conflicts of interest statement

None. JT reports unrelated research support from Otsuka. The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of United States and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of BIMDC.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a philanthropic gift from Jeremy Wertheimer.