Mental disorders and mental illnesses are common issues throughout the world today. 1 in 4 people experience mental health issues and many people aren't able to get help due to lack of access to care or not wanting to speak out about their issues. There aren't enough mental health workers in the world to care for every patient, putting a strain on the healthcare system. Computers and AI are proving to be useful in reducing this strain. It has been difficult to use technology to aid in the field of psychiatry/psychology because the focus of these fields is human brain, an organ that still has its mysteries and complexities for healthcare professionals. While the long term benefits haven't been tested yet, the short term results of these technologies are making a positive impact.
One way that technology has been helpful is through its ability to store data. It can store data about symptoms, the patient's experience, the brain and more. With this information, the treatment for the patient can be more individualized to fit the patient's needs. With this data, machine learning can also suggest treatment options. This isn't always accurate, but it can work as a good second opinion to a clinician.
Additionally, there are a lot of online website that can offer support. There are websites that offer courses on mindfulness techniques, peer support, therapists and more. Chat bots are also becoming more in use as well. The chat bot Wysa reacts to emotions, helps with mindfulness exercises and cognitive behavioral therapy. Some other tools are Youper, TalkLife and Vent. Youper is an application that calms people down so that they can sleep better, and tracks mood and personality. TalkLife and Vent are both community based, anonymous applications where people can share their feelings. Some other technologies can track changes in speech and tone, and use this to gain insights into a person's mental health. A different tone and pace could be signs of depression, abnormal sentence patterns could mean schizophrenia and memory loss could show other brain issues.
Technology can also be useful in mental health clinical trials. Computer science can be used to predict which populations are most at risk for mental health issues, which can aid in clinical trial patient population selection. This increases the amount of money that gets invested into mental health clinical trials, which overall improves the research into mental health.
Some other applications of computer science in psychiatry/psychology are virtual reality therapy, head wearables and deep brain stimulations to treat depression.
For this week I analyzed data from a mental health clinical study on Med students and their mental health. The research question I was tackling was, how does the language someone speaks connect to their mental health? I used matplotlib to make bar graphs of the averaged mental health statistics for the people of different languages.
Kaggle dataset: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/carmenmarielee/medstudent-mental-health-2020
Mental Health Clinical Trial Data Analysis Code