“Serife Tekin, who studies the philosophy of psychiatry at the University of Texas at San Antonio, says psychiatrists have a long history of jumping on the latest technology as a way to try to make their diagnoses and treatments seem more evidence-based. From lobotomies to the colorful promise of brain scans, the field tends to move with huge surges of uncritical optimism that later proves to be unfounded, she says—and digital phenotyping could be simply the latest example.
“Contemporary psychiatry is in crisis,” she says. “But whether the solution to the crisis in mental-health research is digital phenotyping is questionable. When we keep putting all of our eggs in one basket, that’s not really engaging with the complexity of the problem.””
“Machines can spot mental health issues—if you hand over your personal data: Digital diagnosis could transform psychiatry by mining your most intimate data for clues. But is the privacy cost worth it?” MIT Technology Review, by David Adam, August 13 2020:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/13/1006573/digital-psychiatry-phenotyping-schizophrenia-bipolar-privacy/