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Mental Health and
the Impact of Ubiquitous Technologies
Personal
and Ubiquitous Computing Journal
Editors
Bert Arnrich, ETH Zurich
Venet Osmani, CREATE-NET
Jakob Bardram, IT University of Copenhagen
Call for Papers
The majority of research within Ubiquitous Healthcare has been
focused largely on somatic diseases like diabetes, hypertension,
heart failure and obesity.
While some research has been directed towards dementia and autism,
less focus has been given to the major mental disorders and to the
maintenance of mental wellbeing. However mental disorders -
including depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder - affect around a
quarter of all people at some time during their life. These
disorders are universal – affecting all countries and societies, and
individuals at all ages. According to the World Health Organization
(WHO), mental disorders have a major negative direct and indirect
impact on economy and on the quality of life of individuals and
families; and work-related stress was recently found as the second
most common work-related health problem across the EU.
Ubiquitous computing technologies hold an immense potential for the
treatment of mental diseases and for maintaining mental health.
Currently, medical care staff do not have a detailed, long-term view
of the disease or objective measures based on physiology or
behaviour at hand that can be used for making a definitive diagnosis
for mental disease symptoms, monitoring treatment response, or
predicting occurrence of symptoms. The current standards for
diagnosis are still based on questionnaires and subjective clinical
rating scales that were developed in the early 1960s.
Ubiquitous computing technologies can provide support for diagnosis
and treatment of mental disorders and maintenance of mental wellness
through providing innovative ways of administering therapy;
monitoring for early warning signs to allow patients to better
manage their condition; providing objective measurement of symptoms
and prediction of disease onset; enabling long term monitoring to
infer disease patterns and evaluate effectiveness of therapy; and,
providing support for long-term maintenance of mental wellness.
Topics of
interest
For this special issue topics of interest include, but are not
limited to:
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Bio and
physiological measurement technology
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Unobtrusive
long-term monitoring system
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Wearable
sensors and brain to computer interfaces
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Innovative
algorithms for assessment of long-term physiological and
behavioral data
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Prediction of
disease or episode onset
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Decision
support for therapy planning
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Tele health and
mobile technology
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Interaction
Designs and Applications for patient self-care
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Virtual reality
systems for therapy
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Persuasive
technologies and approaches for changing behaviors
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Games in
assessment and therapy
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Cognitive
behavioral therapy, speech therapy, music therapy and
development of new therapies
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Support for
preventative measures
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Supporting
maintenance of mental wellness
Submissions:
Final manuscript submission: January 21, 2011
Papers should be around 10-15 pages (soft limit) using the journal template provided here.
Please submit the manuscript directly to the editors at:
ubihealth
[-at-] create-net.org
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=405512655457
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