Smartphones To Monitor Schizophrenics 99
the_newsbeagle writes Psychiatrists have realized that they can collect vast amounts of data about their patients using smartphone apps that passively monitor the patients as they go about their daily business. A prototype for schizophrenia patients is being tested out now on Long Island. The Crosscheck trial will look at behavior patterns (tracking movement, sleep, and conversations) and correlate them with the patient's reports of symptoms and moods; researchers hope the data will reveal the "signature" of a patient who is about relapse and therefore needs help.
Useful Technology (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who used to answer the 911 psych calls for our volunteer FD in a rural area, a voluntary app like this could be really useful. Where we lived back then first responders were the only regular checks a lot of the psych cases ever got. By the time someone called 911, they were way off the sanity reservation. Then law enforcement got involved and packed them off to primary care. They'd stabilize on their meds, the hospital would cut them loose because they didn't have insurance, sometimes with a couple days worth of meds, and we'd start the cycle all over again. Anything that would alert medical personnel that someone was having a problem and find a way to get them some help before we got a call that they were chasing cows around in the pasture bare ass naked would be a good thing.
I learned that rural areas are full of crazy people because the cost of living is lower and they could be crazy and not bother as many people. It was kind of surprising to find out how many of our neighbors were genuinely, seriously out there howling at the moon loony tunes (technical medical jargon).
Re:controlling words (Score:4, Interesting)
I am doubtful of the smartphones role in this. One must be able to carry the phone without believing it is SPYING on you for the men who want to control you.
I can see smartphones being discarded or traded and the best laid plans of ex-spurts falling to poo.
Re:Sure, that will help (Score:2, Interesting)
It may seem like a joke, but I have met people diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia for whom wearing loud clothes makes it rational that everybody is watching them, and alleviates the anxiety somewhat. If people get used to the fact that they are being observed 24/7, that their phones are always tapped by NSA/GCHQ, and that all their web activity is being watched to see if they are doing anything wrong, then it will make the paranoid delusions more rational. We'll never know for sure how far we are from that scenario, but if someone ten years ago insisted that the NSA were doing what they are, as we know from recent leaks, they would have been regarded as paranoid. That psychiatry at present just categorises symptoms and medicates with pills, rather than trying to understand what is happening in the mind of the person affected doesn't help.
Re:controlling words (Score:4, Interesting)
>The entire fraudulent pseudoscience of psychiatry
You bought this andi-psychology Scientology crap? Fuck you.
I was born with an inability to synthesize serotonin, and lived in a Hell of chronic severe major depression for 54 years until somebody invented a drug (Viibryd) that turned my life from hopeless anxious suffering to a thriving and much more pleasant existence that now makes me glad that I DIDN'T kill myself all through those years.
Some psychology is bogus, some practioners are bad at it or quacks, but not all psychology can be dismissed because you don't want to address your own issues and find denial and anti-scientism an effective avoidance technique.
Again, fuck you.