iPhone of the Future Could Be Able to Tell if You’re Depressed
Not only can your phone connect you to just about anything, soon it might be able to detect mental illness and get you the help you need.
Most of us can’t go even a few minutes without checking our phones, whether you’re on social media, texting or even shopping we all spend a ton of our time looking at them. All of that looking could sometime soon actually help us with our mental health. According to News 10, developers at Apple are currently working on software that could make it possible for your iPhone to detect mental illness’ like depression or even cognitive decline.
How Can an iPhone Detect Mental Illness?
Experts say that once the technology is complete it would take and analyze all of the data that your phone already collects about you. It would take things like, sleep patterns, physical activity and all of the other things you use your phone for and analyze it to possibly come up with a diagnosis.
Today our phones already know so much about us. Almost all phones track just about everything we do, from how many steps we take in a day, what stores we shop at, to the locations we frequent the most, so some experts think this information could go a long way in possibly changing they way people get help with mental illness, others are not convinced that this could work, with some saying it’s not a good idea at all.
One doctor, Dr. Robi Ludwig told News 10 that, "If this information is used for the good, then of course it can be very exciting, the question really is transparency, and I don’t know how many people trust technology to be used to their benefit."
Will Technology Like This Ever Be Affective?
William Antonelli from Business Insider said that, "This is technology that various other companies have tried to implement throughout the years, and it’s never worked quite well, it’s hard enough to diagnose mental illness in real life."
Dr. Ludwig said that it really hard to replicate the intimate, safe, one-on-one relationship between a patient and their doctor that can help one get a diagnosis. "That’s when you get the most real information — from a patient knowing that it’s safe." Ludwig also said that phones are often the source of issues for people suffering from depression.