The problem
Substantial attention and resources have during the last decades been put into the population who suffers from clinical mental disorders, such as major depression and anxiety disorders. However, a large group that has more or less been flying under the radar is the subclinical population, i.e. people suffering from illness, where some criteria are met but not enough to achieve clinical status. The number of people suffering from subclinical symptoms of mental disorders is difficult to calculate. Some researchers believe that the prevalence of subclinical depression is around 30 percentage, which means subclinical mental health issues might be up to six times more common than clinical depression and anxiety. This group of people is often denied treatment, since they do not suffer from a full clinical disorder.
Importance for society
However, if not treated early, there is a high risk the issues might worsen and in the end develop into a full-blown depression or anxiety disorder. By offering these individuals effective and easily accessible treatment early on, society can work in a preventive way as regards mental illness.
Furthermore, looking beyond the clinical and subclinical population, few people feel satisfied with life by only avoiding depression and anxiety. That is why researchers have started to emphasise positive psychology; the branch of psychology focusing on personal growth and well-being beyond the absence of mental illness. Individuals who are functioning in an optimal way — what researchers call flourishing – tend to live longer, have fewer physical health issues and be more productive at work. In addition, it has been shown that people who score highly on flourishing also have the lowest number of health care visits, hospital days and drug consumption. Thus, flourishing can save society enormous amounts of resources, and could be of help to both the subclinical and the healthy population. In a study, 23 European countries were compared with regards to flourishing. The result showed large variations, with the proportion differing from 41 percentage experiencing flourishing in Denmark to less than 10 percentage in Slovakia, Russia and Portugal.
In conclusion, developing effective, scalable and easily accessible self-help interventions to increase mental well-being among the non-clinical population (i.e. both the subclinical and the healthy population) is of great importance for public health around the world. Finding such interventions for this group can both be a way of preventing the development of clinical mental disorders and to help societies to flourish.
Overall objectives
Shim is an automated conversing self-help app for increasing mental well-being among the non-clinical population (i.e. both the subclinical and the healthy population). Shim combines cognitive behavioural therapeutic techniques with human-like support in a chat interface built on both language patterns matching and keywords spotting technologies.
The aim of the project was to conduct a feasibility study between June and December 2016, to further guide technical development and exploitation efforts. The scope of this feasibility study included assessments of i) Users; ii) Technology; iii) Market; iiii) Intellectual Property Rights; and iiiii) Third Party Validation and Dissemination.
