The relationship between mobile phone location sensor data and depressive symptom severity

Abstract

Background. Smartphones offer the hope that depression can be detected using passively collected data from the phone sensors. The aim of this study was to replicate and extend previous work using geographic location (GPS) sensors to identify depressive symptom severity. Methods. We used a dataset collected from 48 college students over a 10-week period, which included GPS phone sensor data and the Patient Health Questionnaire 9-item (PHQ-9) to evaluate depressive symptom severity at baseline and end-of-study. GPS features were calculated over the entire study, for weekdays and weekends, and in 2-week blocks. Results. The results of this study replicated our previous findings that a number of GPS features, including location variance, entropy, and circadian movement, were significantly correlated with PHQ-9 scores (r's ranging from -0.43 to -0.46, p-values