This year, October 10, 2023, the World Mental Health Day was celebrated, which seeks to make visible a public health problem that increasingly affects a larger segment of the world’s population. Among mental health disorders, anxiety is one of the most prevalent psychological problems that affects a large number of people around the world. At UJI, LABPISTEC and GEOTEC research groups have been joining forces and collaborating for years to design and develop computer solutions that help in the effectiveness of therapies for different mental health disorders (see past collaborations).

As a result of this sustained collaboration, the SyMptOMS-JIT (Maximizing the efficacy of in vivo exposure therapy using smartphone-assisted just-in-time adaptive intervention for anxiety disorder) project is a just-started 4-year coordinated project between LABPSITEC and GEOTEC to develop novel solutions for anxiety disorders through mobile and wearable devices. The project’s main objective is to develop and test the effectiveness of the first in vivo exposure therapy for anxiety disorders fully instrumented and guided through mobile and wearable devices, to offer just-in-time psychological interventions, that is, therapies that provide feedback to patients in real time based on their behaviour and actions.

The SyMptOMS-JIT coordinated project – funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, Knowledge Generation Projects 2022 – is in turn composed of two subprojects. The first is called “Analyzing the benefits of using SYMPTOMS-JIT for in vivo exposure in anxiety disorders: A Randomized Controlled Trial using a mixed methods approach” (PID2022-140475OB-C21) and is directed by Juana Maria Bretón López, associate professor and researcher at the Laboratory of Psychology and Technology (LABPSITEC) of the UJI. The second, “SyMptOMS-JIT: Just-in-Time Sensor-based mHealth Development Framework applied to In Vivo Exposure in Anxiety Disorders” (PID2022-140475OB-C22), is co-directed by Sven Casteleyn and Carlos Granell, both associate professors and researchers of the Geospatial Technologies research group (GEOTEC), belonging to the Institute of New Image Technologies (INIT) of the Universitat Jaume I. The entire SyMptOMS-JIT project, coordinated by Juana Maria Bretón López, is a markedly multidisciplinary project where LABPSITEC is mainly responsible for psychological therapy, supported by a set of sophisticated technological tools and applications developed by GEOTEC. A crucial part of the project will be the validation of the content and effectiveness of the technological tools developed through a randomized controlled trial.

Stayed tune at https://symptoms-app.com/