deStress: Mobile and remote stress monitoring, alleviation, and management platform

Excessive stress may lead to health problems like headache, trouble sleeping, depression and chronic diseases such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. In this paper we present deStress, the mobile and remote stress monitoring, alleviation and management system, whose features are: firstly it is wearable and inexpensive, which uses only one wearable stress monitor sensor and a mobile phone-based application (Android OS) to monitor stress. Secondly, deStress quantitatively assesses the user's stress level continuously, not just classifies the users into stressed or non-stressed state. Thirdly, deStress provides a system for stress monitoring and management, through which the stress data could be recorded, analyzed and shared with medical professionals. Last but not least, a novel adaptive respiration-based bio-feedback approach is implemented to alleviate stress. To the best of our knowledge, deStress is the first telehealth system dedicated to mobile and remote stress monitoring, alleviation and management. Extensive experiment are conducted in 30 persons to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of deStress, and the result shows that the stress level assessment of deStress correctly indicates the mental states of the users, and under the guidance of deStress the users could alleviate their stress level dramatically.