project. SELFPASS

project description. 

The application developed within the SELFPASS project allows patients with depression to receive therapy for their disease through (1) self-assessment of the severity of the their mental stress, (2) stored evaluation algorithms that quantify and record the symptoms, (3) practical steps for self-management (4) taking into account integrated biosignal data and (5) current location-dependent environmental information. Thereby, patients receive individualised self-management guidance and concrete situational therapy, e.g., biofeedback training for crisis management. Through (6) integrated feedback and response loops, SELFPASS also represents a self-learning system that provides personalised support to the participating patient in a process-adapted manner. To this end, automatic procedures for the analysis and classification of data from various sources are to be improved and newly developed. In addition, the system will be used to tailor the therapy to the individual patient. Generic procedures for defining and executing rules and processes based on the data were developed, which can trigger automated reactions of the system.

As part of the expansion of the project, a virtual reality (VR) environment was added to the application in collaboration between the Chair of Information and Communication Management of the Technsiche Universität Berlin and the Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg (UKH), which is used to treat anxiety disorders that often occur in connection with depression, by means of exposure therapy. Through the high immersion of VR environments, patients with various anxiety disorders, especially claustrophobia, social phobia and agoraphobia with and without panic disorder, are given the opportunity to expose themselves to an appropriate exposure of varying intensity. The application can be used both diagnostically in the sense of an improved self-assessment of the extent of the anxiety experienced, as well as interventively, since individual coping strategies can be developed, with the help of which the situation can be better managed.