Supporting smartphone-based behavioral activation: a simulation study

Behavioral activation has shown to be a simple yet effective therapy for depressive patients. The method relies on extensive collection of patient reported activity data on an hourly basis. We are currently in the process of designing a smartphone-based behavioral activation system for depressive disorders. However, it is an open question to what degree patients would use this approach given the high demand for user input. In order to investigate this question, we collected paper-based behavioral activation forms from 5 patients, covering in total 18 weeks, 115 days, and 1,614 hours of self-reported activity data. In this paper we present an analysis of this data and discuss the implications for the design of a smartphone-based system for behavioral activation.