Listen Now: High-Tech Mental Health

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Your iphone is taking a closer look at your mental health. I’m Brian Banmiller on Business.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple is working on ways to help detect and diagnose conditions such as depression, anxiety and cognitive decline. The process is still in research stages.  Led by the University of California, Los Angeles scientists are studying stress, anxiety and depression on three thousand volunteers. All those volunteers have an apple watch, iphone or both. Researchers will compare data from the phone and watch such as sleep behavior and exercise with questionnaires filled out by participants. The final step is to measure the stress level of the hormone cortisol in their hair follicles. Another study by the company Biogen is looking at brain activity. If information from the studies lines up with symptoms of depression or anxiety then Apple could create a feature to warn people of potential trouble ahead. The phone would then prompt users to seek medical care and improve their quality of life. Apple says it will be a few years before any features are added to the phone, all depending on the research. Brian Banmiller, CBS News.

About Brian

CBS News Radio national business journalist Brian Banmiller has spent more than 40 years in the news industry, covering business, politics and the economy on television, radio and in print. Currently, his “Banmiller on Business” reports are delivered to an audience of millions nationwide.