Visualizing Early Warning Signs of Behavioral Crisis in Military Veterans: Empowering Peer Decision Support

Several attempts have been made at creating mobile solutions for patients with mental disorders. A preemptive approach would definitely outdo a reactive one. This project seeks to ensure better crisis detection, by assigning patients (veterans) to caregivers (mentors). This is called the mentor-mentee approach. Enhanced with the use of mobile technology, veterans can stay connected in their daily lives to mentors, who have gone through the same traumatic experiences and have overcome them. A mobile application for communication between veterans and their mentors has been developed, which helps mentors get constant feedback from their mentees about their state of well-being. However, being able to make good deductions from the data given as feedback is of great importance. Under-representing or over-representing the data could be dangerously misleading. This paper presents the design process in this project and the key things to note when designing a data visualization for timely crisis detection and decision-making.