Development of an active sensing system for distress detection using skin conductance response

Excessive stress can lead to mental disorders, and in the worst cases, to suicide. The type of stress that is especially harmful to mind and body is known as distress. It is important for people to properly understand their own mental health condition to prevent distress-induced disorders. Recent studies have investigated this issue by developing indices for measuring distress levels by using physiological signals which reflect a person's sympathetic nervous system activity during a task that induces distress. However, in applying these technologies to real life, many factors can impact these stress indices including eustress, stress which induces positive responses caused by activities such as concentration on tasks. It is therefore, difficult to determine an actual distress level. To distinguish distress from eustress, we propose a new active distress sensing system. In this system, users are exposed to emotional stimuli and are expected to experience psychological responses depending on their distress levels. We developed this system using musical mood induction as the emotional stimuli. We established that the psychological response during a state of distress leads to specific skin conductance responses that are not the same as those under a eustress.