UM Clinical

UM Clinical is an app that measures how the environment around you affect your mental wellbeing and the ways you cope with stress in the moment. Three times a day you will be prompted to answer questions about how you feel, the environment around you and the ways you cope with stressful events in your life. At the end of the two-week trial you will receive an individualised report summarising your experiences during this period. The results will be used to help us understand how the relationship between the surrounding environment, mental wellbeing and the ways people cope with stress.

The UM Clinical app uses a technology called “ecological momentary assessment” to monitor how the surrounding environment affects our mental wellbeing. This technology involves presenting people with a prompt a random times, inviting them to answer questions about their surrounding environment, mental wellbeing and the way they cope with stress.

After answering the questions, participants are also invited to take a photograph of the ground or floor where they are standing and/or a short audio recording of their current environment. In addition the UM Clinical app can record information about geographical location and health data, such as how far people walk and cycle; participants can decide whether or not to provide this information.

The data will help us understand how different aspects of the surrounding environment affect mental wellbeing, and will be used to inform novel clinical interventions and the planning and design of healthier cities. At the end of the two-week trial participants receive an individualised report summarising their experiences during this period. Participation in this research project is anonymous, and the information provided by individual participants is kept private and confidential.

UM Clinical is a collaboration between King’s College London, landscape architects J&L Gibbons and arts foundation Nomad Projects.