Passively sensing anxiety and depression symptoms in daily life among middle-aged adults

Laboratory studies have demonstrated associations between depression, anxiety and slowed gait. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the associations between ecological momentary assessments and daily life gait characteristics derived from naturalistic accelerometer signals. We collected phone-based gait data (n = 57) for 90 consecutive days and wrist and hip data (n = 17) for 7 consecutive days.

We examined interactions between the gait phenotypes defined by cadence and peak height. We found that participants with high cadence and high peak height in their gait were less likely to be depressed or anxious. For the wrist-worn actigraph, decreased counts were associated with increased anxiety symptoms.

These findings provide preliminary evidence for integrating passively sensed gait biomarkers into clinical monitoring of anxiety and depression. This work was supported by the Dartmouth Cancer Center Precision Prevention strategic priority (“Precision Prevention of Cancer at Scale: Using Digital Phenotyping to Monitor and Target Modifiable Mental Health Risk Factors via a Smartphone App”), the National Cancer Institute Cancer Center Support Grant (P30CA023108), and the National Institute on Drug Abuse Center for Technology and Behavioral Health (P30DA029926). Center for Technology and Behavioral Health, Dartmouth College, Lebanon, NH, 03766, USA Hannah Dorris, Emma Fredyma, Eilis Murphy, Lisa A.

Jacobson City College of New York, New York, NY, 10031, USA Department of Epidemiology, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, 80304, USA Nicholas Jacobson has received a research grant from Boehringer Ingelheim as principal investigator (although there is no salary support or direct payments to Nicholas Jacobson, it supports research personnel and data collection). Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material.

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To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Dorris, H., Fredyma, E., Kolawole, O. et al. Passively sensing anxiety and depression symptoms in daily life among middle-aged adults.