The Wrist-Worn Device That Detects Depression!

Fitness trackers are great—in some regards. There are things they do well, and things they do badly, and those things are not always the way around you might expect!

We wrote about this, here: What Your Fitness Tracker Is Best & Worst At

In that article, we mentioned that one of the things it’s best at is tracking and establishing patterns.

Can you guess where this is going today?

Actionable actigraphy

Researchers (Dr. Adile Nexha et al.) looked at whether actigraphy*-derived sleep and rest-activity rhythms are associated with relapse in major depressive disorder (MDD).

*actigraphy = activity as plotted on a graph

What they did: 93 adults in remission from MDD across Canada wore a research-grade wrist actigraphy device for 1–2 years, generating approximately 32,000 days of sleep and activity data.

And what did that data tell Dr. Nexha and her team?

In few words: people with more irregular sleep and weaker day–night activity contrast had about a twofold higher risk of depressive relapse, often detectable weeks to months before symptoms returned.

In more words:

• Most important factor: lower relative amplitude—meaning less difference between daytime activity and nighttime rest—remained predictive even after adjusting for concurrent Montgomery–Åsberg Depression Rating Scale scores.
• Other predictors: lower sleep regularity and sleep efficiency, higher wake after sleep onset, higher nighttime activity, and increasingly erratic sleep schedules before relapse.

This is a huge breakthrough because it shows that passive (easy!) continuous monitoring can flag risk earlier than symptom-based check-ins between appointments and could help people get the timely care they need.

Which is especially meaningful in cases of depression, where people struggling with depression are famously one of the hardest demographics to get to actively do something (including: tests).

You can find the paper itself, here: One-Year Actigraphy Study of Sleep and Rest-Activity Rhythms as Markers of Relapse in Depression

Another reason this is particularly important is that depression is sometimes astonishingly well-hidden. A person can be very very depressed, but they’re still switching into “performance mode” for things, sometimes even having a semblance of happiness while doing stuff in the company of others, but it’s all empty inside and lost in an instant once the mask can be allowed to slip, as it must, because keeping up appearances is very draining to someone who already doesn’t have a lot of energy due to the depression.

You can read more about that, here: How To Recognize Perfectly Hidden Depression

Want to learn more?

Some important reads:

• How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To) ← this one’s about as serious as it can get, and we mean it.
• The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need ← no, we’re not going to ask you to name 5 things you can see and all that. That’s more to do with anxiety and disassociative disorders in any case. But what this article does have, is a lot of genuinely practical advice that actually works, and yes, even when your motivation is through the floor.
• Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety ← this one builds on the previous one, and can make use of your health tracker too 😎

Take care!