mHealth for Mental Health

Abstract

An individual’s physiological and social well-being shapes their mental health. Mental health is indicative of one’s cognitive behaviour and emotional well-being. Everything around us is connected through virtue of a network—Internet. The Internet is a tool for information, communication and connectivity. It has been predicted that three-quarters of Internet users will access Internet solely via smartphones in the coming years. This brings an opportunity to monitor health care using smartphone technology. mHealth holds enormous untapped potential in the near future, especially, in the arena of personalised health care and eventually personalised medicine. With data-intensive diagnostics and imaging coming into play, a gigantic amount of data is being collected and stored. In this paper, we have mentioned the importance of mental health, its characteristics and how mHealth devices (smartphone, smart devices, bio-sensors etc.) can play a key role in managing and coping with mental health problems. We have further analysed the behavioural patterns of active smartphone and smart device users globally as opposed to the active users in a particular region. An analysis of the percentage of population suffering from different mental health problems has been undertaken and a solution to these using mHealth architecture and data analytics proposed. We have also highlighted how mHealth sensory system with its 5 potential P’s (Preventive, Personalised, Predictive, Participatory, Psycho cognitive) can revolutionise the mental health landscape.