Social Isolation and Serious Mental Illness: The Role of Context-Aware Mobile Interventions

Social isolation is a common problem faced by individuals with serious mental illness (SMI), and current intervention approaches have limited effectiveness. This article presents a blended intervention approach, called mobile Social Interaction Therapy by Exposure, to address social isolation in individuals with SMI. The approach combines brief in-person cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) with context-triggered mobile CBT interventions that are personalized using mobile sensing data. Our approach targets social behavior and is the first context-aware intervention for improving social outcomes in SMI.