ICT RBL Research – Mental Health Apps – SleepBot

Sanjana Mahesh Rao

Mental Health is the concern for our emotional, psychological and social well-being. Though a lot of
people are concerned about their physical health, mental health is often overlooked since it didn’t seem
to be a subject of importance until about a decade ago. In present times, mental well-being is
recognized to affect a number of things in our everyday life, such as how we behave, our response to
certain situations, our collective thought process, and even our current feelings.

Factors damaging our mental health have also been identified, such as previous trauma, or social
isolation, being faced with discrimination, and consistent and long-term stress/anxiety, too. Even though
these incidents fracture your mental health in different ways, it all essentially simplifies to one thing:
mental disorders. Sadly, that is not on my agenda for this study.

Like the various aspects of mental well-being, sleep plays an important role in your state of mind. Sleep
deprivation is quite common in today’s world, actually. As common as approximately 32.5% of all the
adults in the United States. To put it simply, sleep deprivation is the lack of sleep, and the term also
refers to the consequences of said lack of sleep, which include tiredness during the day, dizziness,
fluctuating moods, constant lashing out at the people whom one is surrounded by, etc…

This brings me to my next point – How should one manage this? Of course, there are the traditional
methods, such as eating a light meal before closing down for the day, drinking a glass of hot water, or
massaging your head before bed, and other common solutions that people have tried to deal lack of
sleep with, but in recent years, modern technology has hopped on the bandwagon and many
applications have been produced to help people who feel they are uncomfortable with they way they
currently are, achieve the state of what is considered a healthy person.

This research is not about social norms, so unfortunately, I will not speak much about what is now
considered healthy. Now, in these times, where the world is basically operated on technology, web
applications to track your sleep cycle have been created. SleepBot is one such application that ranks at
the top of the market in regards to sleep management and mental health care, developed by Jane M
Zhu, and has apparently been available since 2010. The application is equipped with a range of features,
such as a, ‘smart alarm’, which is a quality of the app that is designed to wake the user during their non-
REM (Non Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, which is a stage of the sleeping process wherein an individual is
stuck within a light sleep, as compared to the REM sleep, where dreams take place most often, and the
muscles are paralyzed, preventing situations of sleepwalking, or waking abruptly at the slightest sounds.

During non-REM sleep, the muscles remain tense and can contract and expand, allowing easy
movement. And this can lead to a symptom that is commonly known as, ‘Sleepwalking’, where a person
can rise and move about, although they are not in wakefulness, and are still unconscious. Research has
observed that visions during NREM sleep are similar to one’s thought-process, rather than the bizarre
illustrations that occur whilst dreaming in REM sleep. This is not good for the human brain as it hints at
being active during the hours in which it needs to shut down, relax, and prepare the host for a new day
of constant thinking.

Another feature of this resourceful app is that it is capable of recording the user’s sleep debt, or
managing their sleep deficit. This refers to the contrast between how much sleep is needed for one to
function through the day and remain in a pleasant headspace during it. A balance is required in the ratio
of an individual’s sleeping hours to their active hours, or they will begin to face the backlash of not
getting enough sleep, which includes effects such as migraines and tension headaches, spotted vision,
dizziness, inability to process circumstances and words of others, blurry vision, etc. Studies have
revealed that continuous short-term sleep deficit would result in violent reactions to emotional stimuli.
The app is built in with this facet, as well as an explanation as to why it is included in the app.

SleepBot also offers a variety of smaller features like motion graphing, sleep cycle graphs, sleep trend
graphs, on-and-off alarms, bedtime remainder feature, and others too. If the app’s recording and
motion-tracking features are used, it will use a set-up device’s microphone and accelerometer to
document the user’s actions throughout their rest.
Regardless of the fact that there are other properties of the application, I will conclude this case studyd
by stressing the importance of mental health. Technology plays a great role in everyone’s daily-life now.
It is practically what the industries run on, at this point, and seeing that it is being used to develop apps
with the purpose of self-care and mental health well-being, it is truly noteworthy. This study was just
one example of how technology is deeply embedded in our lives, as well as in the medicine world.