Design Notes - How to Measure Emotional Stress, Distress, and/or Pain

Hello All - I've gotten a few requests to share "How to Measure Stress", so I thought I'd make a blog post sharing what I know, have tested, and links for further information.  Maybe I'll make a book next year on this topic.

A lot of the requests stem from my "Medical Monitor with Emotional Stress Pain Indicator and Biofeedback" and How to Make It.

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Here's some if not most of the methods by which you can empirically determine stress.  Most of these concepts started with basic Polygraphy or Lie Detection.  From there developed Biofeedback Devices, Medical Monitors, then Neurobiofeedback. 

Who knows what's next? I'm working on it!

All the above measure the physiological changes that occur when someone is stressed, e.g. telling a lie, in pain, distressed over some emotional issue, etc.

These links show the most common physiological signs or tests to identify and/or quantify "stress" - 

Polygraph - Most commonly measure are skin conductance, heart rate, and/or respiration.  Heart Rate Variability have been used most commonly lately to determine stress.

As far as I know, here's where it all started way back in 1881 -
Description of a Polygraph. In this crude start, the heart impulses and respiratory movements were measured and recorded.  From there, all of our modern devices have evolved.

Let's not forget Affective Computing, too, in our consideration.
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In my First Medical Monitor with Emotional Stress Pain Indicator and Biofeedback, I used skin conductance.  It was a start and showed the concept.  In my current model, I'm using Heart Rate Variability (HRV), since it is much more robust than skin conductance.  Skin conductance is good, but hard to measure reliably in a real-world setting.  Pulse sensors are more reliable and robust for this usage.  I like the Gravity: Heart Rate Monitor Sensor For Arduino - DFRobot (link below).

Here are some commercially available stress sensors/information available to the public for experimentation:

Skin Conductance -

Grove - GSR Sensor - Seeed Wiki

Galvanic Skin Response GSR - Arduino Forum

Heart Beat/Pulse -

Pulse Sensor - SEN-11574 - SparkFun Electronics

Heartbeat - Arduino Playground

Pulse Sensor With Arduino Tutorial: 9 Steps (with Pictures)

Arduino & Processing - HEART BEAT MONITOR With Pulse Sensor.

SparkFun Single Lead Heart Rate Monitor - AD8232 - SEN-12650 ...

Polar Heart Rate Monitor Interface - SEN-08661 - SparkFun Electronics

Gravity: Heart Rate Monitor Sensor For Arduino - DFRobot

Here are some links on how to measure and use Heart Rate Variability:

Topic: heart-rate-variability · GitHub

HRV Biofeedback - Joegle

Biohack: Heart Rate Variability « Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers ...

Pulse Sensor HRV Poincare Plot – World Famous Electronics llc.

PulseSensor Project HRV - Arduino Forum

Arduino Pulse Sensor Cardio Graph: 3 Steps (with Pictures)

Hacking Mindfulness with an Arduino and the iPhone | kpkaiser.com

Meditation Trainer - Adafruit Industries

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Stay tuned for my next model!  You'll be surprised!

That's about all for now.  Have fun.  Let me know if you have comments, questions, etc.

Disclaimer - Article if for information only and is not medical advice.