The smartphone app that can tell you're depressed before you know it yourself

There are about 45 million people in the US alone with a mental illness, and those illnesses and their courses of treatment can vary tremendously. But there is something most of those people have in common: a smartphone. A startup founded in Palo Alto, California, by a trio of doctors, including the former director of the US National Institute of Mental Health, is trying to prove that our obsession with the technology in our pockets can help treat some of today's most intractable medical problems: depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse. Mindstrong Health is using a smartphone app to collect measures of people's cognition and emotional health as indicated by how they use their phones. Once a patient installs Mindstrong's app, it monitors things like the way the person types, taps, and scrolls while using other apps.