PTSD-Monitoring App Captured the Psychological Effects of the Boston Bombing 68
the_newsbeagle writes "This DARPA-funded smartphone app is designed to monitor veterans for signs of depression and PTSD. It screens for signals of psychological distress in a number of ways; for example, the app looks for signs of social isolation (reduced number of phone calls and texts), physical isolation (the phone isn't leaving the house), and sleep disruption (the phone is used in the middle of the night). Interestingly, the company that invented the app was testing it in Boston at the time of the Boston marathon bombing, and reports that the app picked up signals of distress in the days after the attack."
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and other obvious news at 11
Even more than you might think... this thing was discovering that people were spending more time indoors immediately after they were told to stay indoors if possible, and around the time people's emergency radios were going off in the middle of the night (sleep disruption).
The one curious bit is the decrease in phone calls and texts -- that indicates some actual positive stress correlation, as I would have expected the opposite to be true as people started coping with the event.
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Obviously, the gov't must immediately buy the "global enterprise" version, which will cover evaluating all citizens earning more than double the poverty-line.
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A bit late. (Score:2)
was testing it in Boston at the time of the Boston marathon bombing, and reports that the app picked up signals of distress in the days after the attack."
Would have been a bit more useful if it had picked up the stress in the days before the attack!
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is it called fear tracker? (Score:4, Interesting)
or compliance meter? Pacification gauge?
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It's not the phone company it's a company that is working on making issues less stressful and problem resolution more effective through data analysis that people may not knowingly perceive. Really interesting stuff actually.
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Even better, TFA indicated that the big clue that people were affected was people leaving less interactive data for analysis. Not feeding into their BS is a sign that you are sick apparently.
Re:Not sure what's more depressing (Score:5, Informative)
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called."
-- George Orwell, 1984
Re:Not sure what's more depressing (Score:5, Informative)
This was a standard clinical study with 100 fully-aware participants trying to improve PTSD diagnosis to help the incidents of suicide and psychological issues in returning vets. You've got plenty of other things to gripe about with PATRIOT / PRISM / etc., but for crying out loud this isn't one of them.
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I don't think "literally" means what you think it does...
Re:Not sure what's more depressing (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say the more depressing is that I see 4 posts by numbered Slashdotters and not one even read the first sentence of the summary.
Here it is again:
This DARPA-funded smartphone app is designed to monitor veterans for signs of depression and PTSD.
Smartphone app, as in, it has to be installed on the phone and records behavior to send off to some user approved (even if by obscure yes/no choice) observer to look for suspicious behavior trends.
There were volunteers, they were in Boston, and the marathon got bombed during the testing phase. A significant portion of the volunteers showed the warning behaviors in the days afterward. This is all in the summary, but I suppose actually reading the whole summary and devising an informed post would take too long. Of course, one of the signs "not leaving the house" was probably due to the not-quite-martial-law that was not-exactly-imposed on the city of Boston for those days.
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The app looks at phone usage and location patterns. These tasks can very easily be accomplished by the phone company reading your call and location log. In most places this data is available to law enforcement without a warrant. So while this particular study was made with consent of its participants, it is quite
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You could always just troll them and put leave your phone at home attached to a paint mixer that shakes the phone at random intervals between 8pm and 8am but that otherwise just lets the phone sit there doing nothing while plugged in. That would mess with there data, while you go use a disposable pay as you go phone.
phone hasn't left the house (Score:1)
One reason why the phone hasn't left the house in the Boston metro area was that the police locked down most of the city for a few days. Subway trains and buses weren't running. Logan international airport was open though.
interesting article
seem a bit silly to me (Score:1)
... the app looks for signs of social isolation (reduced number of phone calls and texts), physical isolation (the phone isn't leaving the house), and sleep disruption (the phone is used in the middle of the night).
wouldn't this cover a lot of basement dwellers here on slashdot?
So if I forget my phone... (Score:1)
Re:So if I forget my phone... (Score:5, Interesting)
Normals? (Score:2)
I'm sure that the company had a number of normals -- people living someplace other than Boston (Singapore? London? Moscow?) -- to compare to their Boston subjects.
Actually, I'm not very sure about that.
Those are also signs of having a baby. (Score:1)
Don't have time for phone calls. Don't get out much. Up all night.
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+1 true, sad, and funny
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I think having a child and having PTSD kind of goes together.
Re: Those are also signs of having a baby. (Score:1)
NSA and phone records (Score:1)
Maybe that is why the NSA is so intent on collecting the CDR (call detail records) data from Verizon, and others. Maybe it is really the meta data about the calls that they are after as a way to profile potential terrorists?
Still don't like it, but at least this would be a logical thing for them to do.
A city of inactivity (Score:1)
The problem with this measurement is that it's only to be expected for there to be less activity at the time. When you take into account the heavy militarized police/military/occupational force that flooded into Boston, you have to expect that social communications and outings will decrease significantly.
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The problem with this measurement is that it's only to be expected for there to be less activity at the time. When you take into account the heavy militarized police/military/occupational force that flooded into Boston, you have to expect that social communications and outings will decrease significantly.
That and the effect of an illegal martial law being imposed and having troops in the streets pointing rifles at homeowners would have on former military suffering from PTSD.
Re:A city of inactivity (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Personally, I found the bombing to be less disturbing than the reaction to the bombing, and even more, the reports of how many Bostonians found the actions acceptable.
Get over it (Score:2)
Dozens of schools are shot up wry year in the u.s., death on the roads is in the thousands, and you're all running scared of a couple of twats that could have killed an order of magnitude more people by buying a rifle and shooting up a mall or cinema.
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Dozens of schools are shot up wry year in the u.s.
Citation needed; AFAIK, that actually only happens once every decade or so, it's not the norm by any measure.
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Dozens of schools are shot up wry [every] year in the u.s.
Citation needed; AFAIK, that actually only happens once every decade or so, it's not the norm by any measure.
Wikipedia lists 14 school shootings so far this year.
In the last 12 months, 7 incidents where people died:
September 26, 2012 Stillwater, Oklahoma (suicide)
December 14, 2012 Newtown, Connecticut (major news incident, highest number of deaths since 2007)
January 15, 2013 Hazard, Kentucky (college parking lot)
January 16, 2013 Chicago, Illinois (university parking lot)
January 29, 2013 Midland City, Alabama (ok, a school bus, not a school)
March 18, 2013 Orlando, Florida (university, killer was ready but cha
No actual app? (Score:2)
PTSD (Score:1)
PTDS is such a cute and round-edged name intended to gloss over the harsh fact of shell-shock to the rest of society. "Hey, Johnny came back from life under nearly constant artillery strikes and having to see the most horrifying things for four years, but he just has PTSD which is super common and not a big deal".
We used to call that shit shellshock. It was a strong word with striking connotations, for a reason.