Spatio-temporal determinants of mental health and well-being: advances in geographically-explicit ecological momentary assessment (GEMA)

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Abstract

Purpose

Overview of geographically explicit momentary assessment research, applied to the study of mental health and well-being, which allows for cross-validation, extension, and enrichment of research on place and health.

Methods

Building on the historical foundations of both ecological momentary assessment and geographic momentary assessment research, this review explores their emerging synergy into a more generalized and powerful research framework.

Results

Geographically explicit momentary assessment methods are rapidly advancing across a number of complimentary literatures that intersect but have not yet converged. Key contributions from these areas reveal tremendous potential for transdisciplinary and translational science.

Conclusions

Mobile communication devices are revolutionizing research on mental health and well-being by physically linking momentary experience sampling to objective measures of socio-ecological context in time and place. Methodological standards are not well-established and will be required for transdisciplinary collaboration and scientific inference moving forward.

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Most cited references 156

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Understanding individual human mobility patterns

M. González, A L Barabási, C. Hidalgo (2008)

Despite their importance for urban planning, traffic forecasting, and the spread of biological and mobile viruses, our understanding of the basic laws governing human motion remains limited thanks to the lack of tools to monitor the time resolved location of individuals. Here we study the trajectory of 100,000 anonymized mobile phone users whose position is tracked for a six month period. We find that in contrast with the random trajectories predicted by the prevailing Levy flight and random walk models, human trajectories show a high degree of temporal and spatial regularity, each individual being characterized by a time independent characteristic length scale and a significant probability to return to a few highly frequented locations. After correcting for differences in travel distances and the inherent anisotropy of each trajectory, the individual travel patterns collapse into a single spatial probability distribution, indicating that despite the diversity of their travel history, humans follow simple reproducible patterns. This inherent similarity in travel patterns could impact all phenomena driven by human mobility, from epidemic prevention to emergency response, urban planning and agent based modeling.

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Diary methods: capturing life as it is lived.

Niall Bolger, Angelina Davis, Eshkol Rafaeli (2003)

In diary studies, people provide frequent reports on the events and experiences of their daily lives. These reports capture the particulars of experience in a way that is not possible using traditional designs. We review the types of research questions that diary methods are best equipped to answer, the main designs that can be used, current technology for obtaining diary reports, and appropriate data analysis strategies. Major recent developments include the use of electronic forms of data collection and multilevel models in data analysis. We identify several areas of research opportunities: 1. in technology, combining electronic diary reports with collateral measures such as ambulatory heart rate; 2. in measurement, switching from measures based on between-person differences to those based on within-person changes; and 3. in research questions, using diaries to (a) explain why people differ in variability rather than mean level, (b) study change processes during major events and transitions, and (c) study interpersonal processes using dyadic and group diary methods.

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Stress and the individual. Mechanisms leading to disease.

B S McEwen, E STELLAR (1993)

This article presents a new formulation of the relationship between stress and the processes leading to disease. It emphasizes the hidden cost of chronic stress to the body over long time periods, which act as a predisposing factor for the effects of acute, stressful life events. It also presents a model showing how individual differences in the susceptibility to stress are tied to individual behavioral responses to environmental challenges that are coupled to physiologic and pathophysiologic responses. Published original articles from human and animal studies and selected reviews. Literature was surveyed using MEDLINE. Independent extraction and cross-referencing by us. Stress is frequently seen as a significant contributor to disease, and clinical evidence is mounting for specific effects of stress on immune and cardiovascular systems. Yet, until recently, aspects of stress that precipitate disease have been obscure. The concept of homeostasis has failed to help us understand the hidden toll of chronic stress on the body. Rather than maintaining constancy, the physiologic systems within the body fluctuate to meet demands from external forces, a state termed allostasis. In this article, we extend the concept of allostasis over the dimension of time and we define allostatic load as the cost of chronic exposure to fluctuating or heightened neural or neuroendocrine response resulting from repeated or chronic environmental challenge that an individual reacts to as being particularly stressful. This new formulation emphasizes the cascading relationships, beginning early in life, between environmental factors and genetic predispositions that lead to large individual differences in susceptibility to stress and, in some cases, to disease. There are now empirical studies based on this formulation, as well as new insights into mechanisms involving specific changes in neural, neuroendocrine, and immune systems. The practical implications of this formulation for clinical practice and further research are discussed.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Thomas R. Kirchner:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5764-4980

+1-646-847-8846 , tomkirchner@nyu.edu

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol

Title: Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology

Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg (Berlin/Heidelberg )

ISSN (Print): 0933-7954

ISSN (Electronic): 1433-9285

Publication date (Electronic): 24 August 2016

Publication date PMC-release: 24 August 2016

Publication date (Print): 2016

Volume: 51

Issue: 9

Pages: 1211-1223

Affiliations

[1 ]College of Global Public Health, New York University, 41 E. 11th St., 7th Floor, New York, NY 10003 USA

[2 ]Center for Urban Science and Progress, New York University, New York, NY USA

[3 ]Department of Population Health, New York University Medical Center, New York, NY USA

[4 ]Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA USA

[5 ]Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, PA USA

[6 ]Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy, Pittsburgh, PA USA

[7 ]Clinical and Translational Science Institute, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA USA

Author information

Thomas R. Kirchner http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5764-4980

Article

Publisher ID: 1277

DOI: 10.1007/s00127-016-1277-5

PMC ID: 5025488

PubMed ID: 27558710

SO-VID: c7e1b2b6-7c23-4884-a42f-2cd8e4d6a3e7

License:

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

History

Date received : 28 June 2016

Date accepted : 5 August 2016

Funding

Funded by: National Institute on Drug Abuse (US)

Award ID: R01DA034734

Award ID: R01DA040930

Award Recipient : Thomas R. Kirchner

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry

Keywords: ecological momentary assessment (ema),geographic momentary assessment (gma),geographically explicit ecological momentary assessment (gema),geographic information systems/science (gis),spatio-temporal determinants of health,mhealth

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry

Keywords: ecological momentary assessment (ema), geographic momentary assessment (gma), geographically explicit ecological momentary assessment (gema), geographic information systems/science (gis), spatio-temporal determinants of health, mhealth

Spatio-temporal determinants of mental health and well-being: advances in geographically-explicit ecological momentary assessment (GEMA)

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Measurement of Glucocorticoid Receptor Signaling in Major Depression

Most cited references 156

Understanding individual human mobility patterns

Diary methods: capturing life as it is lived.

Stress and the individual. Mechanisms leading to disease.

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