Current and Future Research Directions in Mental Health Computing

Mental illnesses have been identified as a major cause for disability and responsible for an extensive share of the global burden of diseases worldwide. Likewise psychological factors have been associated with physical health and illnesses. This motivated research into the field of mental health computing, which focuses on computer support systems for understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction, but also on electronic coaching of individuals to promote wellness. This paper describes past, current and future research work of the Delft Mental Health Computing Lab focusing around three research directions: (1) the recreation of relevant realities; (2) intelligent agents for health interventions; and (3) engineering methodologies for applications in the field of mental health computing. Keywords—mental health computing; cyberpsychology, virtual reality; ecoaching; software engineering methodolgies.