HA and Mental Health

Could you rephrase your question please? In her case they like voice prompts but it would depend on indervidual circumstances

Providing voices coming out of nowhere does not seem, to a layman, to be helpful to someone with mental stability issues. But, as you say, it depends on individual circumstances, and if the health professionals think it will help, then you have to follow their advice.

As a retired menhal helth nurse I must ADMIRE you for taking on this task. Hope it will help your wife to an easier life!

Yes I understand what your question s now. In her case she hates the silence. She has had this all her life. Her youngest alter is 3 and she is 42 so 39 years. Herdescription last night to add here is imagine a boardroom of 13 people discussing a issue. Thats what its like for her. Silence is what she hates.

What I am trying to do I guess is help her co-exist. But as an example lets say Jaz (yes each alter has a name) makes an appointment for say a hair cut. but doesnt inform anyone else but an hour before the hair cut she changes to say Faith. She doesnt go as Faith doesnt know about the hair cut. So I am working on them using a calandar etc for that. But in the case of home and HA. Faith is cold and put the heater on. Changes to JD. Jd goes to the shops an dleaves the heater on as she didnt know its being used. So if she is away etc, the heater now turns off etc.

Simple things to all of us but to them its hard. Thats where HA etc is becoming a great assett.

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May I suggest Traccar as an alternative for device tracking. You can use it in the cloud. I would then look at getting a (cheap) watch from Aliexpress which will do things like tracking as well as can go as far as heart rate and possibly even other vitals?

Location is quite important to get home automation right. This way you are not reliant on her having a phone to know if she is at home or not…

There are also some custom component in HA which will then show you various items from the watch as attributes of the device tracker component in Home assistant…

Additionally, I am currently working with our government to select a solution for in-home care for vulnerable individuals. While not directly related, I would love to see what you come up with as well as help and support where I can…

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From your description it’s like you have a lot of people with different tastes and preferences but only one “active” at a given time. So, I’m wondering if it would help to create different profiles or “modes” inside HA and activate each one based on the current alter. Each one could have a light, temperature/whatever settings. Maybe you can even let alexa asks who is at home and set things accordingly.

first i want to say how much i respect you for not giving up on a situation that must be very very hard from time to time.

if there is anything i can help with i will absolutely try.
i guess its very hard to tell which person she is on what moment. if there is any pattern at all (maybe only on 1 specific time a day) that would be helpfull to act on.

are all of her personalities able to click on an icon on a tablet?
because what clyra says can be very usefull.

if you got a tablet with an icon for all personalities, something that that personality like, and you give a positive trigger if they press that, you could get it so far that HA knows who is active at that point.
and if you know who is there you can program around that.

a positive trigger could be that if the button is pressed, that TTS speaks a friendly message. and with random you could make sure it stays interesting for her.

i know from experience that sometimes some things that happen can trigger a personality shift.
maybe that some words or texts have that effect and you can use TTS to get her in a more comfortable/able personality at some point.

let me know if i can help you in any way. programming, or just talking about ideas, feel free to reach out to me in PM or on discord.

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I will have a look at Traccar and thanks for the input. Keep intouch and lets see if we can assist each other

Hi Clyra.

Yep 13 at the current stage. All different ages, tastes etc. For the information of others its like having 13 identical people (not twins but not sure what the twins equivelent is for 13 :slight_smile: ) so that is something I hadnt thought of as in the modes for different alters…

Thanks Rene. I will pm you and have a chat.

Have a look here too: Son's Daily Meds Checker

I’m very interested in how this can help people with mental health.
Were you able to teach the child personality to use Alexa?
Does the auto door lock eliminates the OCD personality’s need to recheck locks?

I like the meds checker. I will take a more detailed look at it.

Yes the children can use Alexa. They quite like it actually. It does depend on which child though and what they are trying to do. Still working on the door lock part. One of the things that I will have to work on is if I can get Alexa to query where I am by using zones etc. I got a call at 1am this morning to ask where I was as Angel didnt know I was away overnight on a work trip. Not necesarily a total HA solution but trying to keep it so I can use one system. I may end up using a tablet on the wall etc for a display of zones etc

Just an project update.
I had the 3 year old personality come out last night and tell me that Alexa listens to her so thats great. All the personalities are having positive experiences with the voice control.

  • I have incorporated presence detection and when she walks down the street etc al the lights etc turn off after a short delay. This means that if one personality has turned on something and they switch to another alter its sort off covered. It also turns off the heater etc

  • On returning to the home zone if after dark it will light up the entry area as she is a nervous person

I am still working on the thermostat via voice but have a tempory solution using an Alexa node and setting brightness as the temp. I have also created a wake up alarm that takes into consideration the travel time.

Still a huge work in progress

Hi all. I feel I owe you all an update.

So we have a few things working well and some needing more work. Some are also based on HA and a couple simple routines etc via Alexa.

Some of my successes

When my partner goes to bed she tells Alexa bedtime and this dims her light to 5%, changes color to purple, starts a meditation mp3 I have uploaded and follows this up after its finished with Pink Floyd

I have a spare Google Mini in the lounge I use for Announcements and reminders. These mostly come from HA/Node-Red. I havent had any success using Alexa for announcements from HA/Node-Red

Using OWNTRACKS for presence when we are away from home all bits and pieces switch off. On coming home after dark it turns on Lounge lights so house is lit

We use a Ring Doorbell. We only get notified of door bell rings on the phone via RING. Movement is too active. However I tap into it via Node-Red and when we are away or its dark, we get movement emails

Hope that gives you all some ideas

hello there,
I have read this now for multiple times. I loved some of the suggestions and we used some of them ourself in my setup. Did you create something since then? I can’t work with voice here, but symbols are a fine thing, it is not DID we’re facing here, but other mental issues that can be tackled by homeautomation. It came to me as a surprise how much can be made easier this way.
Greetings

Thanks blubbel42.

My biggest suggestion is “solve each issue” and not look for them if that makes sense. as an example, we used to leave the stove on so a movement detector, current monitor and an announcement. If no one moves in the kitchen for 30 mins yet the switchboard has current flow via the stove CB we have an issue.

We detect the washing machine running then when it stops it announces the washing is finished every 15 mins until switched off.

Hows that. I will see if I can find some more…

Yeah, things like that… we are utilising a telegram Bot here. A Washing machine reminder is something I’m working at. We also use reminders to tell if windows have been left open and the temperature on the outside drops or rises to an undesired value. So the house tells us about it and we can close the them, even if we totally forgot they were open in the first place.
What also proofed useful were plantsensors, these lowered the kill-count significantly, and therefor the griefing about having failed once again.

Just these “easy day-to-day thingies” are the things i love home-assistant for. Managing life without being overwhelmed, distracted or always half-done.

Since this thread is 5 years old, I’m really curious to hear how your project has evolved over time. Home automation and mental health awareness have both come a long way in the last half-decade, and I can only imagine the improvements and refinements you’ve been able to implement.
Given the advances in technology and increased awareness about various mental health conditions, like Borderline Personality Disorder and its concept of a ‘Favorite Person,’ which you can learn more about, it would be fantastic to see how these insights could be integrated into home automation projects for mental health.

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I’ve been reading this topic with a lot of interest. Thanks for sharing @Secs

I think it’s amazing you are doing this to help out your partner :+1:t3:

We still have most of the original stuff and announcements are what sort of is being added. The children personalities wanted some chooks so we have a chook house with automated (node-red) doors and water barrel monitoring so that if we change personalities during the day they dont forget the chooks are out. Each morning they tell Alexa they are getting up so the system waits a couple of minutes then announces a medication reminder. It also tells them if the water barrel is above half way (its 200 litres) and the weather forecast. She has a garden patch at the community gardens at the other end of town and we use a Lorawan module to send back moisture content so this level is also included in the morning message. To make the messages a bit more interesting I get Open Ai GPT to create say 30 at a time of the various messages. Like I have 30 in the format of Star Trek (a few of the personalities like Star Trek) a couple of examples “Anita, as the Millennium Falcon cruises through the stars, remember to rev up your health with medication. Warp speed to wellness!”
“Anita, let your health soar like an X-Wing fighter and your medication be the hyperdrive that propels you towards optimal well-being.”

So the system randomly selects a different one each day. We have them for chook doors etc. We monitor the moisture level of all the gardens and automate sprinklers taking into account predicted rain etc. For me I have lightning monitors that disconnect my Ham radio antennas and make announcements of strikes getting closer and as of last night I have my monitors being turned off when I am not there of in bed to save electricity.

Generally its an ongoing process. We find an issue and we see what we can do to help.

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