Nine Months in the Life of a College Student During 2020: A Case Study Using Multi-Modal Assessments to Capture Personalized Contexts of Well-being

Emerging adulthood is a period marked by tremendous growth and opportunity, but also of significant risk. It is during this phase that the majority of major disease processes have their onset and also the time during which individuals develop habits for adaptive ways of managing stress and help-seeking when necessary. Recent work has demonstrated the feasibility of estimating stress levels through monitoring of physiological signs of sympathetic nervous system activity (e.g., heart rate, heart rate variability, respiration rate, galvanic skin response, etc.) using wearable devices. However, this method of objective monitoring only captures changes in internal states but not the contextual factors – such as mental activity and social interactions – that are critical for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mental health problems that may follow from the long-term effects of stress. Thus, there is a fundamental need to capture higher-level life events and contextual information to enable root cause analysis for treatment and prevention. The proposed case study is part of a larger pilot study in which we intensely follow a small sample of college students over the course of 9-months during an historic and tumultuous year in which COVID-19 disrupted daily living to understand contextual factors relevant to their mental health while capturing mood, sleep, physical activity, and physiology. In this case study, we showcase a single participant as support for the feasibility and potential of this approach for understanding more personalized models for mental health and treatment.