Journal of Global Public Health and Healthcare Innovation

(Annual (One issue per year))

ABSTRACT

Mental health disorders impose a severe burden across Sub-Saharan Africa, yet the treatment gap exceeds 90% in most countries. A central reason for this gap is the absence of objective, real-time physiological monitoring tools at the community level, compounded by a mobile technology access gap that still leaves women 26% less likely than men to use mobile internet in the region [1]. Mobile health (mHealth) technologies such as wearable biosensors, point-of-care cortisol assays, and cloud-based clinical decision tools provide a technically feasible pathway for monitoring the neuroendocrine correlates of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) outside hospital settings. This paper presents a narrative review, conducted in line with the PRISMA 2020 reporting guideline of peer-reviewed literature published between 2012 and 2026 [2]. It synthesizes evidence on the neuroendocrine physiology of common mental health disorders, the monitoring capacity of current mHealth devices, the implementation context of underserved communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the regulatory environment governing digital mental health data. The review demonstrates that heart rate variability (HRV), electrodermal activity (EDA), and salivary cortisol are valid and accessible neuroendocrine markers for mental health monitoring and that mHealth platforms can deliver these measurements through community health workers without specialist psychiatric personnel. The paper proposes the mHealth Neuroendocrine Mental Health Monitoring Framework (mNEMF) and provides six evidence-based policy recommendations for scaling this innovation within African health systems.

Keywords: Mhealth; Neuroendocrine Monitoring; Mental Health; Cortisol; Heart Rate Variability; Sub-Saharan Africa