Emotion & Affective Technologies for Inclusive Mental Health

Bringing Communities Together

Special Session at ACII 2019 (Cambridge, UK, 3–6 September)

Co-organisers:

• Lola Cañamero (University of Hertfordshire, UK) – L.Canamero@herts.ac.uk (main contact)
• Eva Hudlicka (Psychometrix Associates, USA) – hudlicka@ieee.org
• Matthew Lewis (University of Hertfordshire, UK) – M.Lewis4@herts.ac.uk

Further details will be added to this page as ACII approaches.

Call for Papers

Behavioral health technologies are gaining increasing prominence in the delivery of mental health interventions. However, the affective elements underpinning mental health are not sufficiently addressed, despite the fact that the emotional component of mental health conditions is considerable, e.g.:

• In affective/mood disorders, the primary symptoms are disturbances of affect.
• Deficits in emotion regulation have been identified as significant factors in mental disorders.
• The emotional impact of experience can be a key factor in triggering mental health problems.
• The severe emotional burden takes its toll on both the patient and those around them.

Mental health affects the very core of who we are, and everyone’s experience of mental health disorders is unique. Approaches to mental health therefore need to take into account the diversity of lived experiences of mental illness. In addition, mental health issues do not impact uniformly across the population. For example, women are more likely than men to suffer from mental health problems, while people from minority ethnic groups are more likely to be diagnosed with mental health problems in the UK, and also more likely to disengage from mainstream mental health services. It is therefore imperative that mental health services, through diagnosis, therapies and support, are strongly inclusive.

To address these issues, the aim of this special session is twofold:

1. To highlight the importance of emotions in many aspects of mental health, often neglected in models of mental disorders, and
2. To bring together different disciplines involved in the understanding and treatment of affect-related mental health, as well as different approaches and technologies within affective computing, to discuss how these different partners and aspects must work together to address mental health in an inclusive way.

With this double aim in mind, we solicit papers addressing the potential contributions of affective technologies and multi-disciplinary research to promote inclusive mental health, including topics such as (but not excluding other relevant topics):

• In diagnosis and treatment, to assess patients and customize interventions.
• Teaching or supporting emotion management and emotion regulation skills.
• Affective companions and tools to reduce the emotional burden on patients and their carers.
• Computational and embodied modeling of affect its involvement in cognition as a tool in psychopathology research.
• Strengthening the inclusion of affective aspects of mental disorders in computational psychiatry.
• Adaptive affective and interactive technologies: adapting to people with atypical affect (e.g., people with mental health disorders and non-neurotypical development).

Important Dates

• Submission deadline for Special Session papers: 12 April  23 April, 2019 (ACII regular paper submission deadline)
• Notification of acceptance for the papers: 14 June, 2019
• Camera ready papers due: 12 July, 2019

Submission

Submitted papers should follow the guidelines and submission instructions for the main ACII conference.