Internet of things applied to mental health: Concepts, applications, and perspectives

Abstract

Mental health is a well-being state in which an individual is able to use his/her abilities, recover himself/herself from the daily routine stress, be productive and contribute with the community. The term mental disorder is normally used to designate problems related to the mental health such as depression, excessive anxiety and stress, drug addiction, bipolar disorder and suicide thinking. Depression already affects more than 300 million people, and close to 800 thousand people die due to suicide every year. Therefore, mental health problems have significantly reached a huge portion of the world population. Traditionally, the model to assist individuals who have a mental disorder is performed through face-to-face meetings with specialised mental health professionals. However, recent advances in ubiquitous computing and Internet of Things (IoT) have been explored for proposing innovative patient assistance methods, which are made available through mobile solutions for gathering data about the patient behaviour in real-world environments, identifying risk situations and providing momentary interventions and assessments. These approaches have the potential to revolutionise traditional therapeutic processes, increasing their effectiveness. This chapter provides a deep analysis of ubiquitous computing and IoT usage in the mental healthcare area, describing the involved concepts, proposed approaches and perspectives for future developments.