An interesting study showed a fresh technique that has the ability to identify children with fear and depression, elementary analyzing their movements. By applying a machine learning method that studies movement tracked by a wearable movement sensor, the system is said to identify children with mental disorders than any other and rather than almost all modern ways.

It is estimated, in fact, that within 20% of small children suffer from for example referred to as "internalization of the disorder."These conditions have all chances to include anxiety and depression, but, as you know, they are not easy to identify because of the problems of children who can truly talk about the signs and often unobserved disposition of disorders. Disorders of internalization of early formation in children often precede more late tasks with well-being, this as abuse of psychoactive drugs and suicide.

"Due to the scale of difficulty it asks nasteleno screening technologies, in order to identify children early, so they had the opportunity to be oriented to the care they need," talks Ryan McGinnis, explaining the motives of the study.

The study was focused on teaching the method of machine learning to distinguish children with anxiety and depression on the basis of small bodily movements. For this reason, scientists have lured 63 children aged 3 to 7 years, within thirty percent of whom were previously diagnosed with internalization disorders.

Kids were equipped with wearable sensors of movement, and after that have undergone a task of induction of the mood intended for such to cause concrete feelings, these as excitement. Usually highly qualified therapists looked after these behavioral studies and then become a diagnosis, but scientists suspected, in fact, that the trained method has the ability to arrange the same work, and they were right.

Applying only 20 seconds of data on the movement at an early stage of the task of mood induction, the method eventually managed to distinguish children with internalization disorders from those who were not, with an accuracy of 81 percent. The method was more clear in the definition of internalizing disorders than the diagnosis acquired from, for example, the control list of the behavior of the baby, filled with guardians questionnaire with 120 items related to behavioral problems.

"The fact that we usually do with months of study and months of coding, it is possible to arrange for a number of minutes.processing with the support of these tools," - says Ellen McGinnis, a clinical specialist in psychology, working on the plan.

Scientists intend to further Refine the method with a large number of subjects, and even connect other data, these as a voice test, in order to increase the specificity of the results. In the benchmark, the system can ultimately distinguish these behaviors as anxiety and depression. In the long opportunity, the scientists hope the fact that this development has the ability to be implemented in schools in order to assist promptly to qualify children who need special support, or including are used in hospitals doctors as a normal estimates of the formation.