Relationships between smartphone social behavior and relapse in schizophrenia: A preliminary report

Social dysfunction is a hallmark of schizophrenia. Social isolation may increase individuals' risk for psychotic symptom exacerbation and relapse. Monitoring and timely detection of shifts in social functioning are hampered by the limitations of traditional clinic-based assessment strategies. Ubiquitous mobile technologies such as smartphones introduce new opportunities to capture objective digital indicators of social behavior. The goal of this study was to evaluate whether smartphone-collected digital measures of social behavior can provide early indication of relapse events among individuals with schizophrenia. Sixty-one individuals with schizophrenia with elevated risk for relapse were given smartphones with the CrossCheck behavioral sensing system for a year of remote monitoring. CrossCheck leveraged the device's microphone, call record, and text messaging log to capture digital socialization data. Relapse events including psychiatric hospitalizations, suicidal ideation, and significant psychiatric symptom exacerbations were recorded by trained assessors. Exploratory mixed effects models examined relationships of social behavior to relapse, finding that reductions in number and duration of outgoing calls, as well as number of text messages were associated with relapses. Number and duration of incoming phone calls and in-person conversations were not. Smartphone enabled social activity may provide an important metric in determining relapse risk in schizophrenia and provide access to sensitive, meaningful and ecologically valid data streams never before available in routine care.