Personal mental health navigator: Harnessing the power of data, personal models, and health cybernetics to promote psychological well-being

Amir M Rahmani; Jocelyn Lai; Salar Jafarlou; Iman Azimi; Asal Yunusova; Alex P Rivera; Sina Labbaf; Arman Anzanpour; Nikil Dutt; Ramesh Jain; Jessica L Borelli

doi:10.3389/fdgth.2022.933587

Personal mental health navigator: Harnessing the power of data, personal models, and health cybernetics to promote psychological well-being

Front Digit Health. 2022 Sep 22:4:933587. doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2022.933587. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Amir M Rahmani^{1

2

3}, Jocelyn Lai⁴, Salar Jafarlou¹, Iman Azimi^{1

3}, Asal Yunusova⁴, Alex P Rivera⁴, Sina Labbaf¹, Arman Anzanpour⁵, Nikil Dutt^{1

3}, Ramesh Jain^{1

3}, Jessica L Borelli^{4

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Computer Science, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA.
² School of Nursing, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA.
³ Institute for Future Health, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA.
⁴ Department of Psychological Science, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA.
⁵ Department of Computing, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.

Abstract

Current digital mental healthcare solutions conventionally take on a reactive approach, requiring individuals to self-monitor and document existing symptoms. These solutions are unable to provide comprehensive, wrap-around, customized treatments that capture an individual's holistic mental health model as it unfolds over time. Recognizing that each individual requires personally tailored mental health treatment, we introduce the notion of Personalized Mental Health Navigation (MHN): a cybernetic goal-based system that deploys a continuous loop of monitoring, estimation, and guidance to steer the individual towards mental flourishing. We present the core components of MHN that are premised on the importance of addressing an individual's personal mental health state. Moreover, we provide an overview of the existing physical health navigation systems and highlight the requirements and challenges of deploying the navigational approach to the mental health domain.

Keywords: health cybernetics; mental health; personal chronicle; personal health models; wearable internet-of-things.