Mobile Stress Interventions: Mechanisms and Implications

According to the American Psychological Association, 49% of the U.S. population suffers from chronic, daily stress. Chronic stress also has significant long-term behavioral and physical health consequences, including an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, anxiety and depression. In this work, we examine how smartphones and mobile sensing can help address the short and long-term consequences of stress. First, we define a conceptual framework for thinking about the interaction between real-time pervasive devices and the real-time physiology of stress. Second, using this framework, we propose a set of guidelines or requirements for pervasive just-in-time intervention (JITI) systems. Third, based on these guidelines, we specify a three-layer software/hardware architecture to support just-in-time interventions for stress. Several themes emerge from this discussion, including the need for robust and accurate context-sensitive forecasting of future stress. Fourthly we describe our experiments and results demonstrating the feasibility of forecasting future stress from current measurements and the effectiveness of the intervention management approach. Finally we discuss the broader implications of mobile-based stress interventions. Whilst this work focuses on chronic stress, we believe the ideas presented are generalizable to other types of just-in-time pervasive interventions.