WARN-D: building an early warning system for depression.

Project Description & Objectives

Studying can be a stressful time, and some students experience mental health problems such as depression during their education. To understand these stressors and experiences better, our study is one of the first in the world to really zoom into the daily lives of students. To do so, we follow 2,000 students living in the Netherlands for 2 years, in part using smartwatches and smartphones as data collection tools. We hope that the results from this study will help us understand what stressors students experience, and how students deal with these stressors. When our study is done, the collected data will help us to build the personalized early warning system WARN-D, which we will make available for free as a smartphone app. The idea of the app is similar to apps that provide you with storm alerts for the next few days in your region. WARN-D will help us develop personalized prevention programs to tackle mental health problems before they occur. Unlike storms from which we can only run or seek shelter, there is a real chance we can prevent mental health problems altogether.