WARN-D: Your personal code yellow - orange - red
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WARN-D: Your personal code yellow - orange - red

Imagine getting a notification on your mobile phone with your personal code for impending mental health problems or even depression: yellow, orange, or red. Science fiction? Not for scientist Eiko Fried. 'There is a real chance we can prevent some mental health problems before they occur.' Want to participate in his WARN-D(epression) research yourself? Register now!

The WARN-D project does not lack ambition. This ambition is necessary, because to get a European research grant for your plans, your ideas have to be big and compelling. Eiko Fried is collecting data from 2000 students about the stress they experience during their daily lives. He wants to follow students living in the Netherlands for 2 years, using a smartwatch and smartphones as data collection tools. This large collection of data is the basis for the development of an app that serves as a personal warning system for possible depression: WARN-D(epression).

Citizen science

'WARN-D will help us develop personalised prevention programmes to address mental health problems before they occur', clinical psychologist Fried expects. 'The study is unique worldwide; no one has ever tried to set up such an early warning system with a similar dataset. We are conducting the study in 4 groups of 500 students each. We are sharing our data and also creating data reports for our participants, so that the students can access and use their own data.' The first two phases of his research are over and he is already seeing some tentative results.

Join the WARN-D study

You can register to participate in the study up to and including 31 October 2022 through the button below.

Participate

Tentative results

'In WARN-D, we understand depression as a dynamic system', Fried explains. 'This system has many important aspects, including mood, problems, current and previous positive and negative experiences, social relations, sleep, activity and many more. An early look at the data reveals that students make vastly different experiences, and face many different stressors and adversities. Many stay resilient in the face of adversity, but others struggle. We are confident that understanding depression as a system of inter-related aspects will help us to understand and predict future depression.'

Understanding the mental health of students

Due to the success with the first two group of students, the small research team has exploded from 4 to more than 25 members in the past year, including those from abroad. Fried: 'Our main goal is to understand the mental health of a very broad group of students with diverse experiences. Therefore, for the next group of 500 students we are working together with a number of universities and schools, e.g. MBO Rijnland, with student services and organisations, e.g. Caring Universities.

Interested?

For more information about the research project please visit the Facebook page, Instagram page or the website of WARN-D.