Dartmouth professor Andrew Campbell has developed a mental health monitoring app based on automatic smartphone sensing. StudentLife compares students’ happiness, stress, depression and loneliness to their academic performance

In a recent study, passive sensors continuously collected data on location, conversations, mobility, and sleep patterns of 48 participants over 10 weeks. The students were also prompted with questions about their mood and stress several times per day.

The researchers administered (self reported) mental health and behavioral surveys at the start and end of the term, evaluating participants on depression, loneliness and stress. Academic records, including GPAs, were also measured.

Campbell’s team found strong correlations between the self-reported data and the automatic sensing data. They believe that, based solely on the automatic data, the app could effectively predict certain mental health issues and academic performance levels in students.