Michigan State University Develops ‘iSee’ – An App That Will Help College Students Fight Depression

College is both a time to learn skills and build a great foundation for a promising career. While college students can have fun learning and preparing themselves for a great future, they also face various hurdles in school, and one of these is depression.

To help college students in the fight against depression, researchers at the Michigan State University are developing iSee, an app that works with a wristband that will help school counselors treat students struggling with depression, and for the student to manage it himself, EdTech Magazine reported.

The app iSee, which is being developed with the help of a grant from the National Science Foundation, will be using the sensors inside smartphones and wristbands to monitor a student's physical activities, diet, social behavior, sleeping habits, and travel behavior. The data collected by the app will then be used to help clinicians identify a student's level of depression, and the appropriate treatment or course of action necessary to treat the problem.

"Our technology will allow college counseling centers to be more accurately informed with the severity of each student," Mi Zhang, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering who is leading the project, said. "As such, unnecessary visits can be reduced and clinician time can be better utilized."

Project collaborator Jingbo Meng, an assistant professor of communication at MSU, adds that the app will help clinicians better understand what a certain student goes through, and will greatly help in their communication.

"We hope this technology can streamline this process," she says.

This new technology is expected to open up doors to new advancements in counseling services offered in schools. MSU counseling center director Scott Becker, a collaborator on the iSee project, believes it will greatly improve how school counseling centers engage with students.

"The iSee project is an extremely innovative approach to using technology in the context of mental health treatment, and it promises to significantly augment the ways in which university counseling centers engage with our students," Becker said.