Kamie A.'s Senior Project Blog!

The standard mental wellness assessment for teens currently only occurs once a year in a pediatrician’s office and thus does not provide an accurate perspective on teens’ constantly fluctuating mental wellness. This research is determining whether the standard assessment for mental health and substance use may be conducted algorithmically through a mobile app as well as the feasibility and acceptability of utilizing this method to assess mental wellness among teens. To determine whether the standard mental wellness assessment may be conducted algorithmically, I am validating the algorithms within Gieia, a teens’ mobile mental wellness assessment app that I developed, through a two-part process. My mentor is assessing and diagnosing data sets for the validated screening tools within Gieia based on each screening tool’s corresponding scoring guide. Next, I am inputting these data sets into Gieia’s algorithms and checking whether my mentor’s manual diagnoses match Gieia’s diagnoses. Secondly, I am conducting market research with a cohort of teen colleagues who are utilizing Gieia and providing feedback through a qualitative interview. The interview addresses teens’ perception of the acceptability, accessibility, and content of Gieia; challenges utilizing Gieia; and suggested modifications to Gieia to promote teens’ engagement. These results can validate that teens may utilize Gieia to assess mental wellness consistently thus providing a more complete perspective on teens’ mental wellness and leading to a more accurate diagnosis. Furthermore, these results inform future modifications to Gieia to ensure that this tool promotes the accessibility of mental wellness assessment and resources for teens.