A monitoring device to objectively assess functional/ psychosocial impairment in older-age adults with major depression

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Depression is one of the most common psychiatric disorders, being the fourth highest cause of disability worldwide. In later-life, depression can have a huge negative impact on quality of life and can affect many different aspects of day to day living and social relationships. As well as suffering from low mood, many individuals with depression show a reduced ability to think, plan and concentrate and it is thought that these problems may link directly to the problems with day to day living. This is an important link to study and understand, however there are problems in how accurately measurements of daily activity and social interactions can be obtained. This research project intends to develop a device that can be worn by an individual and will measure very accurately the amount of activity and interactions with others (but to protect the privacy of people, the device will not record actual conversations). This, for the first time, will allow researchers to precisely examine how different aspects of depression, such as low mood and reduced thinking ability, relate to day to day living and social interactions. Because of particular problems in these areas, the present project will focus on older age people but this device will have potential applications in many other areas in the future.