Tell me your apps and I will tell you your mood: correlation of apps usage with bipolar disorder state

Abstract

Bipolar Disorder is a disease that is manifested with cycling periods of polar episodes, namely mania and depression. Depressive episodes are manifested through disturbed mood, psychomotor retardation, behaviour change, decrease in energy levels and length of sleep. Manic episodes are manifested through elevated mood, psychomotor acceleration and increase in intensity of social interactions. In this paper we report results of a clinical trial with bipolar patients that amongst other aspects, investigated whether changes in general behaviour of patients due to onset of a bipolar episode, can be captured through the analysis of smartphone usage. We have analysed changes in smartphone usage, specifically app usage and how these changes correlate with the self-reported patient state. We also used psychiatric evaluation scores provided by the clinic to understand correlation of the patient smartphone behaviour before the psychiatric evaluation and after the psychiatric evaluation. The results show that patients have strong correlation of patterns of app usage with different aspects of their self-reported state including mood, sleep and irritability. While, on the other hand, the patients' application usage shows discernable changes in the period before and after psychiatric evaluation.