Use of symptoms by schizophrenics to monitor and regulate their illness

E-Prevention: Advanced Support System for Monitoring and Relapse Prevention in Patients with Psychotic Disorders Analyzing Long-Term Multimodal Data from Wearables and Video Captures

Wearable technologies and digital phenotyping foster unique opportunities for designing novel intelligent electronic services that can address various well-being issues in patients with mental disorders (i.e., schizophrenia and bipolar disorder), thus having the potential to revolutionize psychiatry and its clinical practice. In this paper, we present e-Prevention, an innovative integrated system for medical support that facilitates effective monitoring and relapse prevention in patients with mental disorders. The technologies offered through e-Prevention include: (i) long-term continuous recording of biometric and behavioral indices through a smartwatch; (ii) video recordings of patients while being interviewed by a clinician, using a tablet; (iii) automatic and systematic storage of these data in a dedicated Cloud server and; (iv) the ability of relapse detection and prediction. This paper focuses on the description of the e-Prevention system and the methodologies developed for the identification of feature representations that correlate with and can predict psychopathology and relapses in patients with mental disorders. Specifically, we tackle the problem of relapse detection and prediction using Machine and Deep Learning techniques on all collected data. The results are promising, indicating that such predictions could be made and leading eventually to the prediction of psychopathology and the prevention of relapses.

An Intelligent Cloud-Based Platform for Effective Monitoring of Patients with Psychotic Disorders

The therapy of patients with psychotic disorders (i.e., bipolar disorder and schizophrenia) could benefit from the constant monitoring of their physiological and motor parameters. In this paper, we present an innovative and advanced cloud based platform that facilitates the effective monitoring of such patients. A commodity smartwatch is used for biosignal and motion data collection at a 24/7 basis. The paper describes the technical details of the implemented application both on the smartwatch and the cloud server side. Technical challenges regarding the upload, the storage and the battery constraints of the smartwatch are also discussed, along with the initial results regarding data visualization and processing.

[Integrated management of patients with schizophrenia: beyond psychotropic drugs]

INTRODUCTION

Schizophrenia is a complex disease with severe functional repercussions; therefore it merits treatment which goes beyond drugs.

THEME DEVELOPMENT

It requires an approach that considers a diathesis-stress process that includes rehabilitation, psychotherapeutic strategies for persistent cognitive, negative and psychotic symptoms, psychoeducation of patient and communities, community adaptation strategies, such as the introduction to the work force, and the community model, such as a change in the asylum paradigm.

DISCUSSION

It is necessary to establish private and public initiatives for the integrated care of schizophrenia in the country, advocating the well-being of those with the disease.

CONCLUSIONS

The integrated management of schizophrenic patients requires a global view of the patient and his/her disease, and its development is essential.

Why Research Doesn't Yield Treatment

This article has presented examples from nursing research with chronically mentally ill clients that illustrate problems with utilization of nursing research in this field. Obstacles to utilizing research in clinical practice include (a) difficulty in identification of treatment goals; (b) difficulty in measurement of treatment outcomes; (c) diversity of psychotherapeutic interventions; (d) attrition of clients over a relatively short period of time; and (e) variation among clients with regard to degree of impairment, response to medication, and social support. These problems were examined using the criteria described by Fawcett (1982) for utilization of research findings: scientific merit, clinical relevance, and clinical evaluation. Limitations for utilizing findings from research with the chronically mentally ill were illustrated in the areas of scientific merit and clinical evaluation. However, studies of the chronically mentally ill and their treatment showed definite clinical relevance, indicating the need for further research with the chronically mentally ill.