Perseverative Thinking

The term "Perseverative thinking" is used to describe continuously thinking about negative events in your past or future. This is generally considered a symptom of anxiety or depression.

In the field of mobile health (mHealth) it is useful to have a way to measure perseverative thinking as part of a general continuous health assessment. A common method for assessing this symptom is a standard 15-item questionnaire, known as the Perseverative Thinking Questionnaire (PSQ-15).

There are many published academic papers regarding this questionnaire. One classic reference is listed here:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000579161000114X

This mobile app provides a sample implementation of the classic PTQ-15 questionnaire. This app can be used by itself, or it can be used as part of a suite of apps that is used to do health screening or diagnostic support.

By itself, this mobile app does not collect or share any data with a server. But this app can be used together with ANOTHER mobile app that is designed to collect data and store it in a secure database as part of a clinical study.

As an example, if you wanted to study the relationship between perseverative thinking and diabetes, the PTQ-15 questionnaire could be used together with the Diabetes Screener mobile app that provides database support and send data to a remote server. You can view the Diabetes Screener mobile app in this link:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobiletechnologylab.diabetes_screener&hl=en_US&gl=US

An example of how these apps can be used together is demonstrated in the following YouTube video (for the case of Pulmonary Screener):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4p5Uaq32FU

If you wish to use this mobile app as part of a clinical study using smart phone data collection, please contact our lab for more information.

Thank you.

Contact:

-- Rich Fletcher (fletcher@media.mit.edu)

MIT Mobile Technology Lab

Mechanical Engineering Dept.