Tell Your Watch Your Mood

Wristwatches have been the natural selection for wearable tech. Fitness bands are able to calculate your step count and monitor your heart rate simply by having the sensor in the base read the electric impulse on your skin. They have become a necessary tool in athlete training and now researchers are hoping to take wearable tech into areas beyond physical fitness. 

At the Lancaster University in the United Kingdom researchers are working with smart materials to create prototypes of wrist watches that can aid people with emotionally affective disorders. The strap may change color or the watch may begin to vibrate as emotions get heightened in the wearer. The low cost prototypes provide a large variety of possible emotion readers.

Knowing what your emotions are is the beginning to mastering them, says one of the lead authors of the scientific study. It is a complex skill that people with depression, anxiety disorder, or bi-polar disorder are unable to handle. Using this wearable tech may help them create real time changes in handling emotional out bursts in an easier manner. 

While there is no prototype ready to market as on now, it is easy to see how a device like this would be a game changer in the mental health industry. Maybe one day soon care givers to mental disorder patients will be able to use the advantage of these smart wrist watches to help their patients.