The whole person is spiritual: wearable devices are used to study mental illness

Patients with schizophrenia often have problems with sleep disorders, which used to be thought to be a side effect of schizophrenia, but recent research suggests that poor sleep may also be a cause of schizophrenia. The problem is, schizophrenia patients themselves usually do not notice the sleep-related physiological indicators that may trigger the recurrence of schizophrenia. What should I do? The researchers said that after having a wearable device that can monitor the quality of sleep, this is not a problem.

According to the British Daily Mail, a study led by the National Institutes of Health (NIHR) Biomedical Research Center, the Mozley NHS Trust and King's College London was launched in the UK. Researchers teamed up with the smart bracelet Fitbit Charge HR to gather more data on sleep patterns affecting people with schizophrenia, and hope to use these data to identify signs of relapse in a person's schizophrenia.

FiFitbit Charge HR for researchers conducting mental illness research

Researchers have developed a real-time monitoring system, and all participants will use Fitbit Charge HR and companion smartphones. These devices monitor the user's sleep and daily behavior and upload the data to the team server for evaluation in real time.

Schizophrenia is a chronic mental health disorder in which patients develop a range of psychiatric symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions. It is a form of mental illness, and patients often cannot distinguish between their own imagination and reality. About 1% of people will experience schizophrenia throughout their lives. This mental illness is generally high between the ages of 15 and 35.

The researchers said, "Deterioration of sleep quality is the main sign of relapse in patients with schizophrenia, but until now, this problem has not been objectively studied. The information flow collected this time provides us with the observations in the normal environment. Sleep mode for comparing the relationship between sleep quality and recurrence of schizophrenia."

When you fall asleep, people slowly calm down and are completely still in the REM sleep phase (REM). The heart rate will also slow down while sleeping, usually lower than the heart rate during normal rest. These sleep states can be measured with Fitbit Charge HR.

↑Fitbit Charge HR can monitor people's exercise posture, heart rate and other physiological indicators, so that researchers can observe the sleep state of patients with mental illness.

The researchers believe that "in the future, when the sleep state of patients with schizophrenia is disordered and may cause symptoms to recur, the wearable device will send information to the patient's community medical staff to intervene in the first time." "Through Fitbit With the matching access, we can 'zoom in' the sleep of the participants and increase the monitoring of the sleep state from the minute level to the second level."

"We believe that this collaboration will greatly advance our research, enabling us to more accurately detect and predict the recurrence of schizophrenia."

The first two months of the trial were patients with a "relatively stable" condition with no recurrence. But psychiatrist Dr. Nicholas Meyer told the tech media Wired that future research will recruit more patients with more serious medical history.

Recently, another study from the University of Bonn and King's College London showed that 24-hour sleep deprivation would lead to symptoms similar to schizophrenia in otherwise healthy people. Losing spiritual contact with reality, hallucinations and delusions.

Professor Olic Ettinger of the University of Bonn said, "It is clear that a sleepless night will damage your ability to concentrate. We are surprised to find out the symptoms of schizophrenia in sleep-exfoliators."

What will this study reveal in the end? Researchers believe that this means that individual medical care will gradually enter the field of mental illness, and when it is not sick, it will find clues and timely intervention. This makes people with mental illness feel less helpless.