Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

The present moment is rarely fearful but we keep generating anxiety from our own imaginations about the future. The objective of this research is to bridge that gap promoting the paradigm that mindfulness of the present moment is key to mental health and can be achieved via digital intervention models focused on training the mind through repeated self-observation of user’s own cognitive interpretation bias through visualizations of self-reported data. The Sati App proposes a reality-based mind training method inviting users to repeatedly observe the gap between their cognitively biased interpretations of a future possibility and the reality itself -revisited later. Users are directed to enter qualitative data- their thoughts and quantitative data - the degree of anxiety they feel about a future possibility before and after the reality manifests itself. A digital visualization plot of mental patterns over a range of time can be viewed by the users to enhance their self-awareness about their perceptions of reality. The digital app is a software implementation using Python frameworks, libraries and database (Flask, Plotly, Bokeh, Postgres DB) with front-end in JS, HTML, CSS. A random sample of twenty-five users (age group range 18-25) acknowledging anxiety or depression (PHQ9 score less than 15- mild/moderate) who are not seeking any clinical treatment or therapy option is studied. The effectiveness of the method is evaluated by the measure of cognitive bias modification achieved as reported by the users after using it at least for twenty-five different scenarios over a period of six months.