Mobile Application: For Anxiety and Cardiovascular Depression Monitoring Using a Smartwatch Based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Abstract

In recent years, medical care for mental health has been affected by the confinement situation due to COVID-19. Access to these services has been strongly affected, becoming virtual to avoid close contact. However, this change brought other problems to starting conversations with the patient and monitoring their mental health since the description of events reported by the patient is not entirely accurate and can be biased. For this reason, an approach is proposed for monitoring anxiety and cardiovascular depression by applying the cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) technique, also considering levels of the patient's physiological variables using a smartwatch. This approach consists of choosing the type of CBT technique as the basis of the mobile application, the selection of physiological variables, choosing the smartwatch model applying benchmarking, and the design of the mobile application. Two scenarios were used for the experimentation: (a) without the proposal and (b) with the proposal. Results of real-life environment validation experimentation showed an increase of more than 80% of the events discussed in therapy using the proposed solution, in addition to an average rating of 4.75 by the psychologist. Lastly, the results of the surveys show specialists and patients consider the proposal useful.