Neuropsychiatric correlates of power state in smartphone use

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a complex and devastating illness with heterogeneous symptoms, late diagnosis, and excess early mortality. It is also associated with comorbidities including substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and sleep problems, that have adverse effects on the individual over the entire course of the disease. While effects of these comorbidities have been identified in the literature, few studies have involved longitudinal assessments and reproducible data collection in large populations. Recent smartphone research tools have been developed that provide better access to patients and can enable a real-world snapshot of a person’s mental state. In addition, these tools use the phone’s sensors to construct a digital phenotype of an individual, with the potential to detect changes in symptoms and cognition on a moment-by-moment basis. Previous studies report associations between anxiety and smartphone use, but most involve cross-sectional data and cohorts of healthy controls completing paper and pencil scales. A recent smartphone study collected day-to-day symptomatology, cognition, and phone usage data and discovered that the association between anxiety and smartphone use is more complex than originally thought.