Search

Stress and Anxiety negatively affect mental health and can lead a number of debilitating impacts to overall health and well being. In the recent past, adolescents are becoming increasingly afflicted with Stress and Anxiety. In this paper, we report our findings on a six-week study of 70 students at a college campus on associations between Stress and Anxiety with respect to Internet usage of students. Using Cisco NetFlow records, on-campus Internet usage of students was collected continuously and unobtrusively in a privacy-preserving manner. Using the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS), students were separated based on normal scores and high scores separately for both Anxiety and Stress. Mann-Whitney U-tests revealed that there exists statistically significant differences in the mean values between the groups from the perspective of several Internet usage features. Students with high stress scores exhibit decreased chat (octets, packets, duration), total duration, and streaming duration compared to the students with normal stress scores. Students with high anxiety scores showed an increased mail duration and decreased peer-to-peer duration compared with students with normal anxiety scores. The methods and results of this paper provide a framework for conducting similar studies at universities with the goal of aiding student mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mental disorders are the main cause of disability worldwide, and they cause a high social impact, a significant deterioration in people's cognitive and physical level and an important economic weakening to current health care systems. These facts show the importance of design, development and implementation of applications aimed at achieving an improvement of patients' quality of life. This paper researches and analyzes several technological applications in this field and how they contribute to improving the situation of the three main actors: the patients, society (family, physicians, caregivers, etc.) and the healthcare system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Developed societies are currently facing severe demographic changes: the world population is ageing at an unprecedented rate. This demographic trend will be also followed by an increase of people with physical limitations. New challenges are being raised to the traditional health care systems, not only in Portugal, but also in all other European states. There is an urgent need to find solutions that allow extending the time people can live in their preferred environment by increasing their autonomy, self-confidence and mobility. AAL4ALL is a project currently being developed in cooperation with 34 Portuguese interdisciplinary partners, from industry to academia, R&D and social disciplines, which employs a novel conceptual approach through the development of an ecosystem of products and services for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) associated to a business model and validated through large scale trial. This paper presents a comparative perspective of the needs and attitudes towards technology of the AAL users and caregivers identified in the analysis of a set of three different surveys: a users survey targeted at the Portuguese seniors and pre-seniors; an informal caregivers survey targeted at the family, friends and neighbours who provide care without any financial compensation; and a formal caregivers survey targeted at physicians, nurses, psychologists, social workers, and direct-care workers providing care to elders. The first results indicate that AAL solutions must be affordable, user friendly and have a true perceived benefit to their users. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]