AI detecting mental health issues through texting

Let’s say that you are having some mental health issue going on because of getting depressed, losing a loved one, or even getting a bad grade on a really important test. You’re constantly texting your friends and trying to cope with the tough times that you are going through. Don't you want some assistance to resolve your depression? Well, say thank you to artificial intelligence.

AI has recently been linked to reversing mental health decline in individuals through a very intriguing and shocking method - observing your text messages. I know. Strange, right?

First, let’s talk about AI, also known as artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence refers to when computer systems have the capability to mimic human tasks and often with better efficiency. Some very common household artificial intelligence systems are speech recognition devices, language translation systems, and facial recognition systems. AI has been changing our life for about a decade and will continue changing our life as time progresses. One very important type of artificial intelligence system is machine learning, where the computer receives a model of data to base its results off of when it receives the actual information. 

Now, on to this astounding and shocking study. According to the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, Washington, an artificial intelligence machine capable of discovering “red-flag” languages in text messages has been discovered. “Red-flag” language is considered harmful and could signal mental health decline. According to the website ‘healthitanalytics’, a study published in the journal, ‘Psychiatric Services’ stated that a specific artificial intelligence algorithm known as cognitive distortion could detect this ‘red-flag’ language.

Mainly due to the pandemic, mental health crises in people, especially in teens have taken a massive uptick. We weren’t having enough social interactions, we weren’t enjoying school enough, and we couldn’t even step out of our homes. In fact, you may not believe this but life is still not normal due to some restrictions still placed in our area. 

In this study conducted by University of Washington researchers, batches of text messages were exchanged between 39 patients and their respective doctors through a period of 12 weeks. After these batches of data were collected (7,354 unique messages!) After the data was collected, the process known as ‘natural language processing’ was implemented. In contrast, human evaluators also graded the data to see if there were any signs of cognitive distortion. Natural language processing is a useful process due to the fact that long strands of text can be shortened into meaningful summaries to make it more understandable. These could include long clinical notes or journal articles. NLP is mainly used in the medical field because of its ability to summarize lengthy articles to make it easier for physicians and even patients to comprehend. Moreover, NLP has been in many mental health studies. It was then proven that the artificial intelligence system was able to detect mental health decline as well as human evaluators! 

This study also shows that there are numerous benefits to this technology. Firstly, this AI system could detect mental health issues in patients that humans would not be able to pick up. This is also trusted because this AI was able to detect mental health decline as well as their human evaluator counterparts. AI could also help other doctors as well trying to figure out processes to help save a patient’s life. 

More importantly, this study is very important because mental health is a very important issue in many people’s lives today and more recently, we have seen more issues in the news about people suffering from mental health problems and this tool could possibly help! I say that mental health is a very important issue because look at this statistic, “1 in 25 Americans lives with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression.” That's approximately 13.5 million Americans! 

Do you see how important this issue could be and how this technology could advance the healthcare field as we know it? You may not even be realizing it but mental health is a very important issue and our computer friends could be a huge part in solving it. 

Works cited:

Andrea, P. (2022, October 12). AI spots signs of mental health issues in text messages on par with human psychiatrists: UW study. Fiercebiotech.com. https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/ai-spots-signs-mental-health-issues-text-messages-par-human-psychiatrists-uw-study

Data and statistics. (2022, March 31). Cdc.gov. https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/data_publications/index.htm

Erin, M. (2022, January 14). What Are the Benefits of Natural Language Processing Technology? Health IT Analytics. https://healthitanalytics.com/features/what-are-the-benefits-of-natural-language-processing-technology

Shania K. (2022, October 13). AI Tool Can Detect Signs of Mental Health Decline in Text Messages? Health IT Analytics. https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ai-tool-can-detect-signs-of-mental-health-decline-in-text-messages