Is Big Data the New Stethoscope? Perils of Digital Phenotyping to Address Mental Illness

Digital Phenotyping: an Epistemic and Methodological Analysis

“…In this paper, we adopt a broad philosophical vantage point to investigate the epistemic nature of digital phenotyping in relation to its alleged promise. This epistemological mapping and analysis extends a small but growing body of recent philosophical work on the subject (Birk & Samuel, 2020;Burr & Cristianini, 2019;Burr et al, 2020;Loi, 2019;Mulvenna et al, 2021;Sharon, 2017;Stanghellini & Leoni, 2020;Tekin, 2020). Unlike most of the literature to date on philosophy and digital phenotyping, which has focused on its ethical aspects, this paper focuses on its epistemic and methodological aspects.…”

“…This value has been questioned. For example, some argue that digital phenotyping is overhyped (Tekin, 2020) and that much more research and empirical validation is required to gauge its epistemic worth (Carr, 2020). Indeed, some writers caution about the risk of digital phenotyping in reducing complex mental and social phenomena to numbers and associations (Stanghellini & Leoni, 2020) or to digital markers of superficial behavior which could engender an impoverished picture of human experience (Birk & Samuel, 2020).…”

Online Psychotherapy During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

“…19 Apart from the obvious ethical concerns, there is insufficient evidence about the effectiveness of these chatbots in the available literature. 20 …”

Mind the Gaps: Ethical and Epistemic Issues in the Digital Mental Health Response to Covid‐19

“…The Inequality Gap P roponents of digital mental health regularly tout the power of these tools to reach underserved populations, such as refugees and veterans. 11 However, there is a substantial risk that these technologies will perpetuate existing social biases and inequalities. 12 The Covid-19 pandemic has brought these inequalities into sharp relief, and it is already clear that the mental health fallout will be most significant for those with overlapping vulnerabilities.…”