Project team
- Helen Fisher, Kings College London (UK)
- Christian Kieling, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)
- Brandon Kohrt, George Washington University (USA)
- Ricardo Matsumura de Araujo, Universidade Federal de Pelotas (Brazil)
- Alastair van Heerden, Human Sciences Research Council (South Africa)
UN Sustainable Development Goals addressed
- Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being
Abstract
Depression is a leading cause of disability in adolescents worldwide and is a major risk factor for suicide, the third most frequent cause of death in adolescents globally. A barrier to developing more effective interventions for adolescent depression is that we lack a sufficient understanding of how depression develops and how to identify adolescents at highest risk for depression.
Moreover, 90% of the world’s adolescents live in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), yet the majority of research on adolescent depression has been conducted in high-income countries (HIC), leaving a significant gap in knowledge of predictors of adolescent depression worldwide. Technology in everyday usage offers an inexpensive opportunity to improve identification of adolescents at risk of developing depression in LMICs to guide the targeting of preventive strategies.
We have established a global interdisciplinary consortium: Identifying Depression Early in Adolescence (IDEA), and together with experts in smartphone-based passive sensing and machine learning, we are uniquely positioned to successfully conduct longitudinal research on depression risk harnessing technology in LMIC settings to address this gap. Our objective for this project is to test the predictive utility of a risk calculator for future depression that we have developed in a middle-income country and determine whether prediction is improved by incorporating information on adolescents’ experiences obtained in real-time via their smartphones.
We have already screened 7,700 adolescents and recruited a baseline sample of 150 adolescents (50 “high-risk”, 50 “low-risk”, 50 “current untreated depression”) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. We now propose to collect follow-up assessments on this cohort at 2 and 3 years after the baseline assessment. The follow-up assessments will include passive sensing and samples of the adolescents’ speech recorded on their smartphones, to determine whether the technologically-enhanced risk calculator prospectively predicts which adolescents develop depression. Additionally, we will build capacity for technological research in Brazil.
Project lead, Helen Fisher, said: “We're thrilled to have this opportunity to extend our existing IDEA consortium to incorporate new partners in Brazil and South Africa and harness everyday technology to improve identification of adolescents at risk of depression. This will pave the way to preventing the development of this disabiling disorder among adolescents around the globe.”
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