IMPACT OF ARTICIAL INTELLEGENCE (A.I) IN MENTAL HEALTH.

Miriam mueni mwendwa 23-2702   

Mental health is the psychological, emotional and social well-being of an individual. It affects how people think, feel or act. A good mental health allows an individual to cope well with normal stress of life and function normally. The core domain that defines good mental health includes mental health literature, attitude towards mental disorders, self-perception and values, cognitive skills, emotions, behaviors, self-management skills, social skills, physical health, sexual health, meaning of life and quality of life. An increase in mental health awareness Need to be considered as there is no health without mental health. It needs to be integrated in all aspects of health and social policy, health system planning and delivery of primary and secondary health care, this will help us achieve our millennium development goals such as empowerment of women, improvement of maternal health, reduction in child mortality and reversal spread of HIV/AIDS.

With the advent of the digital approach to mental health, artificial intelligence has been used to detect mental health conditions, prediction and treatment of the condition. In terms of treatment A.I is being incorporated into digital intervention for example smartphone apps or the web, to enhance user experience and optimize personalized mental health care. In terms of prediction and detection data-driven A.I methods can be employed to develop it.AI has “the potential  for radical change in terms of service delivery and development of new treatment” in mental health(Bhugra et al.,2017,p.775)

A.I is used in mental health in three main ways

Ø  Smartphone and digital phenotyping-This involves the use of a sensor and usage data from personal digital devices like smart phone to infer contextual and behavior information about a person that can then be used as input for machine learning methods to predict psychological or psychometric outcomes and mental health conditions. Apart from smartphone, there has also been work on using wearables such as smartwatches and actigraphy devices

Ø  Language, voice and mental health research is ongoing to detect the association of language and mental health. The idea that the language we use and our vocalization can indicate our psychological states coupled with advances in the field of A.I of natural language processing and audio analysis.

Ø  Chatbots and virtual agents-Chatbot is a computer program that mimic conversation with users via a chat interface, either text or voice-based. The underlying system can be based on a variety of foundation ranging from a set of simple rule-based responses and keyword matching to sophisticated NLP technique (35,36). The history of chatbots is intimately tied with psychology.

A.I is helping mental practitioners redefine mental illness more objectively than currently done in DSM-5, identify illness at early stage when intervention may be more effective and personalize treatment based on an individual unique characteristic. However, caution is needed in order to avoid over-interpreting preliminary results .

However due to the notion of job loss through machines, machines doing almost all job entitled for human being, it has led to stress and depression among job seekers which is a contributor of mental illness among job seekers

However early evidence shows the advantages of AI use outweighs the disadvantage of such technology.