How Emotion AI May Revamp Mental Health Treatment

As reported by the World Health Organization (WHO), close to 8,00,000 people commit suicide every year. In fact, suicide claims more lives than malaria, breast cancer, war or homicide. In a bid to combat the situation, health professionals have turned to new technologies, including emotional artificial intelligence (AI).

Emotional AI is capable of analyzing small details such as voice, writing, and facial expressions of individuals to understand a sudden change in what an individual may be displaying at a given time. The information can help doctors diagnose appropriately and improve their condition before it is too late. From analyzing voice patterns to the tone of language used in an email, Emotion AI can have several uses in the therapy sector.

In this article, we shall take a look at how emotion AI can play a crucial role in revamping mental health treatment.

Endless Possibilities

The use of AI is many when it comes to the field of psychology and healthcare as it can be used to analyze records of patients and create reports based on that data. It can further assist by handling administrative tasks as well. These activities will allow doctors and other authorities to focus on tasks that are of higher priority.

Emotion AI can further enable patients to regulate their emotional condition under stressful or challenging situations. The technology can be used by doctors and therapists to increase the emotional awareness of the patient to demonstrate empathy, and hand over swift and accurate diagnosis reports. It can further be used to understand how patients will react to therapy to continue the treatment or not.

Emotion AI And Chatbots

It is hard to understand how chatbot and emotion AI can be connected, and how they can help patients. But when it comes to finding support – especially for patients with mental illnesses – the task becomes harder since the illness is stigmatized. To help patients navigate this challenge, several companies have come up with avatars and assistive robots to provide therapeutic options. And this approach may be working since many are taking up this option and even benefiting from it.

A virtual therapist can help patients feel more comfortable when it comes to sharing their problems. This can sometimes become a barrier in human-to-human conversations. Thus, for patients who find it challenging to go through the entire therapy setting, emotion AI chatbot can act as a key solution. Although costlier than regular sessions at present, the technology automates talk therapy and accessibility that can provide broader access to mental health treatments.

Predict Suicide Risks

Emotion AI is not only limited to mental health treatment, but can also play a vital role in predicting the suicidal behaviour of a patient. In recent times, Facebook has played a significant role in preventing suicides as it continuously monitors contents shared by users. This can hint at the suicidal tendencies of individuals and alert authorities in case of an emergency. The feature was developed after several individuals were found to be committing suicide by coming live on social media platforms. What is more, several mishaps have been successfully averted in recent times due to the intervention of technology.

Developers are working around the clock to create emotion AI assists that will enable doctors and counsellors to understand the factors that create suicidal behaviour in an individual. Researchers at Vanderbilt University created an AI model which uses patient’s records to predict the risk of suicide among them with an accuracy of 84 to 92% within one week of a suicide event. Although the technology is still at a nascent stage, the recent developments are quite promising and could enable doctors and healthcare professionals to bring the numbers down.

Future

Emotion AI is a technology that will only flourish as more and more time is being spent on research and by developers to come up with new models that will help reach the objective. However, several challenges exist. These include ways on how to integrate AI into the therapist-patient loop of detection, awareness and treatment. Furthermore, privacy and patient data must be taken into account as AI models consider sensitive patient data to make decisions.

Since the technology is still developing, it needs to be controlled by humans to provide the best treatment possible by receiving regular feedback from the patients. What is even more critical is that expert human supervision is required to ensure no harm is caused to the patient during the machine-assisted intervention. In the times to come, technology must be made available for everyone, since it is undoubtedly a better option to streamline the entire treatment procedure of mental illnesses.