ReviewEvidence-based mental health2020
Digital phenotyping for mental health of college students: a clinical review.
Review in Evidence-based mental health, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 60 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
60 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Digital Phenotyping for Stress, Anxiety, and Mild Depression: Systematic Literature Review.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2024Pooled it
- The Use of Mobile Assessments for Monitoring Mental Health in Youth: Umbrella Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Pooled it
- Optimization of a Mobile Transdiagnostic Emotion Regulation Intervention for University Students: A Micro-Randomized Trial.Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress · 2025Trial
- Scalable depression monitoring with smartphone speech using a multimodal benchmark and topic analysis.NPJ digital medicine · 2026Article
- Digital Phenotyping for Adolescent Mental Health: Feasibility Study Using Machine Learning to Predict Mental Health Risk From Active and Passive Smartphone Data.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Using Smartphone-Tracked Behavioral Markers to Recognize Depression and Anxiety Symptoms: Cross-Sectional Digital Phenotyping Study.JMIR mental health · 2026Article
- Digital phenotyping of affect and stress in emerging adults.Frontiers in digital health · 2026Article
- A multimodal deep learning approach for mental health classification of university students: an intelligent early warning system.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2026Article
- ROOM to Grow, a Mobile Well-Being Intervention for University Students: Overview of the Design Process and Outcomes.JMIR formative research · 2025Article
- Article
- Harnessing Digital Phenotyping for Early Self-Detection of Psychological Distress.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Cross-Platform Availability of Smartphone Sensors for Depression Indication Systems: Mixed-Methods Umbrella Review.Interactive journal of medical research · 2025Review
- Integrating Artificial Intelligence and Smartphone Technology to Enhance Personalized Assessment and Treatment for Eating Disorders.The International journal of eating disorders · 2025Review
- E-mental Health in the Age of AI: Data Safety, Privacy Regulations and Recommendations.Alpha psychiatry · 2025Article
- Mobility-Based Smartphone Digital Phenotypes for Unobtrusively Capturing Everyday Cognition, Mood, and Community Life-Space in Older Adults: Feasibility, Acceptability, and Preliminary Validity Study.JMIR human factors · 2024Article
- Empowering Mental Health Monitoring Using a Macro-Micro Personalization Framework for Multimodal-Multitask Learning: Descriptive Study.JMIR mental health · 2024Article
- Association Between Attitudes Toward Mental Illness and Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Help Among College Students.Alpha psychiatry · 2024Article
- Effectiveness and uptake of a transdiagnostic emotion regulation mobile intervention among university students: Protocol for a randomized controlled trial.Internet interventions · 2024Article
- Article
- Beyond rating scales: With targeted evaluation, large language models are poised for psychological assessment.Psychiatry research · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Experiencing continued growth in demand for mental health services among students, colleges are seeking digital solutions to increase access to care as classes shift to remote virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using smartphones to capture real-time symptoms and behaviours related to mental illnesses, digital phenotyping offers a practical tool to help colleges remotely monitor and assess mental health and provide more customised and responsive care. This narrative review of 25 digital phenotyping studies with college students explored how this method has been deployed, studied and has impacted mental health outcomes. We found the average duration of studies to be 42 days and the average enrolled to be 81 participants. The most common sensor-based streams collected included location, accelerometer and social information and these were used to inform behaviours such as sleep, exercise and social interactions. 52% of the studies included also collected smartphone survey in some form and these were used to assess mood, anxiety and stress among many other outcomes. The collective focus on data that construct features related to sleep, activity and social interactions indicate that this field is already appropriately attentive to the primary drivers of mental health problems among college students. While the heterogeneity of the methods of these studies presents no reliable target for mobile devices to offer automated help-the feasibility across studies suggests the potential to use these data today towards personalising care. As more unified digital phenotyping research evolves and scales to larger sample sizes, student mental health centres may consider integrating these data into their clinical practice for college students.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.