Dr. Alexia Polillo
Dr. Marta Maslej
Dr. Alexia Polillo is a staff scientist with the Slaight Family Centre for Youth in Transition at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). She is also an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and the Division of Social and Behavioural Health Sciences in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
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She obtained her PhD in experimental psychology from the University of
Ottawa and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at CAMH.
Dr. Polillo’s research program is at the intersection of digital mental health, social media, evaluation, and lived experience engagement. Her research focuses on evaluating hospital- and community-based mental health services to improve access, engagement, and quality of care using mixed and participatory methods and leverages digital tools and social media to improve youth mental health.
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Currently, her work is supported by the University of Toronto Department of Psychiatry’s Reasons for Hope Fund, which uses wearable devices, ecological momentary assessment, and mobile sensing to identify digital markers of psychopathology among young people with mental illness. She is also co-lead of digital phenotyping on the Cohort Network for Adolescents and Youth with Multiple Mental Health Conditions (CALM) study funded by the Ontario Brain Institute and co-lead of engagement on the Toronto Adolescent and Youth (TAY) Cohort Study funded by the CAMH Foundation.
Dr. Marta Maslej is a staff scientist with the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics (KCNI) at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). She completed her PhD in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour (PNB) at McMaster University, with a focus on understanding the emotional and cognitive symptoms of depression, and implications for treatment. Dr. Maslej started her clinical research training at CAMH in 2018, by evaluating the feasibility and efficacy of an online psychosocial intervention for depression. She joined KCNI as a CIHR-funded postdoctoral fellow in 2019, with an interest in the potential of technology to improve mental health assessment and care.
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Dr. Maslej’s current research at KCNI involves using computational methods to derive insights from clinical data, including psychiatric notes, with the aim of improving assessment, informing treatment decisions, and identifying and mitigating bias. She is interested in human-AI teaming, or the ways AI can supplement limitations in human cognition and prognostication to enhance psychiatric care. As part of this work, she co-leads the Predictive Care team, which draws on interdisciplinary methods to anticipate impacts of AI applications on patients and providers, with a focus on promoting compassionate and equitable care. Dr. Maslej’s other research initiatives involve increasing access to sociodemographic data to support fair AI applications in mental health, as well as collaborations on large cohort studies, which aim to understand functional trajectories in schizophrenia spectrum disorders and how to improve suicide prevention efforts at CAMH. Her research has received funding from CIHR, SSHRC, Google Research, and AMS Healthcare.
Dr. Alexia Polillo
Dr. Marta Maslej
Dr. Alexia Polillo is a staff scientist with the Slaight Family Centre for Youth in Transition at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). She is also an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and the Division of Social and Behavioural Health Sciences in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
​
She obtained her PhD in experimental psychology from the University of
Ottawa and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at CAMH.
Dr. Polillo’s research program is at the intersection of digital mental health, social media, evaluation, and lived experience engagement. Her research focuses on evaluating hospital- and community-based mental health services to improve access, engagement, and quality of care using mixed and participatory methods and leverages digital tools and social media to improve youth mental health.
​
Currently, her work is supported by the University of Toronto Department of Psychiatry’s Reasons for Hope Fund, which uses wearable devices, ecological momentary assessment, and mobile sensing to identify digital markers of psychopathology among young people with mental illness. She is also co-lead of digital phenotyping on the Cohort Network for Adolescents and Youth with Multiple Mental Health Conditions (CALM) study funded by the Ontario Brain Institute and co-lead of engagement on the Toronto Adolescent and Youth (TAY) Cohort Study funded by the CAMH Foundation.
Dr. Marta Maslej is a staff scientist with the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics (KCNI) at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). She completed her PhD in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour (PNB) at McMaster University, with a focus on understanding the emotional and cognitive symptoms of depression, and implications for treatment. Dr. Maslej started her clinical research training at CAMH in 2018, by evaluating the feasibility and efficacy of an online psychosocial intervention for depression. She joined KCNI as a CIHR-funded postdoctoral fellow in 2019, with an interest in the potential of technology to improve mental health assessment and care.
​
Dr. Maslej’s current research at KCNI involves using computational methods to derive insights from clinical data, including psychiatric notes, with the aim of improving assessment, informing treatment decisions, and identifying and mitigating bias. She is interested in human-AI teaming, or the ways AI can supplement limitations in human cognition and prognostication to enhance psychiatric care. As part of this work, she co-leads the Predictive Care team, which draws on interdisciplinary methods to anticipate impacts of AI applications on patients and providers, with a focus on promoting compassionate and equitable care. Dr. Maslej’s other research initiatives involve increasing access to sociodemographic data to support fair AI applications in mental health, as well as collaborations on large cohort studies, which aim to understand functional trajectories in schizophrenia spectrum disorders and how to improve suicide prevention efforts at CAMH. Her research has received funding from CIHR, SSHRC, Google Research, and AMS Healthcare.
Dr. Alexia Polillo is a staff scientist with the Slaight Family Centre for Youth in Transition at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). She is also an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and the Division of Social and Behavioural Health Sciences in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
​
She obtained her PhD in experimental psychology from the University of
Ottawa and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at CAMH.
Dr. Polillo’s research program is at the intersection of digital mental health, social media, evaluation, and lived experience engagement. Her research focuses on evaluating hospital- and community-based mental health services to improve access, engagement, and quality of care using mixed and participatory methods and leverages digital tools and social media to improve youth mental health.
​
Currently, her work is supported by the University of Toronto Department of Psychiatry’s Reasons for Hope Fund, which uses wearable devices, ecological momentary assessment, and mobile sensing to identify digital markers of psychopathology among young people with mental illness. She is also co-lead of digital phenotyping on the Cohort Network for Adolescents and Youth with Multiple Mental Health Conditions (CALM) study funded by the Ontario Brain Institute and co-lead of engagement on the Toronto Adolescent and Youth (TAY) Cohort Study funded by the CAMH Foundation.
Dr. Alexia Polillo
Dr. Marta Maslej
Dr. Marta Maslej is a staff scientist with the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics (KCNI) at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). She completed her PhD in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour (PNB) at McMaster University, with a focus on understanding the emotional and cognitive symptoms of depression, and implications for treatment. Dr. Maslej started her clinical research training at CAMH in 2018, by evaluating the feasibility and efficacy of an online psychosocial intervention for depression. She joined KCNI as a CIHR-funded postdoctoral fellow in 2019, with an interest in the potential of technology to improve mental health assessment and care.
​
Dr. Maslej’s current research at KCNI involves using computational methods to derive insights from clinical data, including psychiatric notes, with the aim of improving assessment, informing treatment decisions, and identifying and mitigating bias. She is interested in human-AI teaming, or the ways AI can supplement limitations in human cognition and prognostication to enhance psychiatric care. As part of this work, she co-leads the Predictive Care team, which draws on interdisciplinary methods to anticipate impacts of AI applications on patients and providers, with a focus on promoting compassionate and equitable care. Dr. Maslej’s other research initiatives involve increasing access to sociodemographic data to support fair AI applications in mental health, as well as collaborations on large cohort studies, which aim to understand functional trajectories in schizophrenia spectrum disorders and how to improve suicide prevention efforts at CAMH. Her research has received funding from CIHR, SSHRC, Google Research, and AMS Healthcare.
Digital Phenotyping Prompts
Adolescence and young adulthood are critical times of development, during which many young people experience the onset of mental health challenges. These periods also coincide with near-constant use of smartphones and social media.
While research suggests that excessive social media use can negatively impact mental health, their association is still unclear, especially for young people who already experience mental health symptoms.
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CALM Digital Phenotyping aims to better understand how smartphone and social media use relate to mental health in youth with existing mental health challenges. Specifically, the study aims to explore how digital behaviors impact key factors such as sleep, physical activity, and stress, which may in turn influence mental health outcomes.
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Our study is recruiting participants from CALM to complete a period of digital phenotyping between two assessments. Three digital phenotyping tools will be used: EARS, a smartphone app that passively tracks how participants use their phones, Fitbit, a wearable device that collects data on sleep, movement, and stress-related signals, and Curious, which collects real time survey data pertaining to mood, physical activity, and social media use from participants throughout the day .
By moving beyond self-reported measures, this project aims to provide a deeper, more accurate understanding of how digital behaviours influence youth mental health and to identify opportunities for early intervention and support.
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CALM Digital Phenotyping is guided by youth advisory groups (YAGs) consisting of youth advisors with lived/living experience of mental illness, facilitated by youth engagement specialists. Youth advisors guide every stage of the research from study design to start-up to implementation.