A Digital Assessment Paradigm for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Thesis)

Can smartphones, computerised tasks and webcams help spot PTSD earlier?

PTSD is common in Australia—especially among veterans and police—but it often goes undetected because thorough clinical assessments take time and specialist staff. My PhD tested whether a fully remote, low-burden assessment (done on a regular laptop/phone) could help.

What we did

Forty-two veterans and police completed short, at-home activities:

• a brief trauma story in their own words (audio/video)
• quick picture-based attention tasks
• a few days of very short symptom check-ins on their phone (EMA)

We analysed language, voice, and facial expression patterns alongside the phone micro-surveys, and compared results with the gold-standard PTSD interview.

What we found

• A combined computer model correctly flagged every PTSD case in our sample (no missed cases) while keeping false alarms reasonably low.
• Surprisingly, some single sources worked brilliantly on their own:
  • short phone app check-ins (micro-surveys) over four days,
  • the way people told their trauma story (word use, flow), and
  • facial expression during the story.
• Tasks that rely on split-second reactions or precise heart-rate from webcams were less reliable at home.

Why it matters

This early work shows that remote, low-cost tools can capture meaningful PTSD signals and could support large-scale screening and ongoing monitoring—especially where specialist services are scarce. Patterns over time (how symptoms rise and fall during daily life) were more informative than one-off snapshots.

Caveats

This was a small, fairly similar group (mostly male veterans/police) over a short period. Results need testing in larger, more diverse samples. These methods are not a diagnosis; they’re meant to support, not replace, clinicians.

What’s next

We hope to run bigger, more diverse studies, extend monitoring beyond four days, and focus on the most helpful pieces (phone micros-survey check-ins + brief narrative), with strong privacy safeguards. In the mean time, we’re using some of these ideas in our DECODE PTSD trial, seeing if similar digital assessments can help predict who is most likely to respond to which treatment.