AI chatbots and mental health

The pandemic, economic recession and war in Europe are all factors that contribute to negativity and depression. However, access to quality mental health care varies across countries. In some areas, it may be difficult to find qualified professionals, or supply may be lower than demand. All of this has contributed to the rapid popularity of mental health provider apps. Other technological advances, such as artificial intelligence chatbots, may play a key role in the future of mental health care. Let’s take a look at the advantages and limitations of this technology.

MENTAL HEALTH

In addition to mental health provider apps and AI chatbots, There have been other impressive steps in mental health: By the end of 2020, venture investors had poured an impressive $1.5 billion into mental health-related startups in the United States.

There are more than 10 mental health unicorns (companies valued at $1 billion) in the United States.
• 124 mental health startup deals closed last year, compared to 69 in 2016.
• These are great steps. However, the following question must be asked: How effective are these applications? In particular, how effective are those using artificial intelligence?

Benefits of Artificial Intelligence Chatbots

Artificial intelligence chatbots are used in many industries where customer service is crucial. Research shows that some people prefer interacting with chatbots rather than interacting with real people. Chatbots can present information instantly and are available 24/7.

1. Anonymous

In mental health care, these advantages are also important. But these same advantages are also important in mental health care. Additionally, many people avoid contacting mental health providers out of fear of being judged, especially when it comes to sensitive issues. Chatbots have been proven to help overcome this fear and provide assistance to those who need it. Chatbots are highly praised for their anonymity. For example, some patients find it easier to open up to a screen than to a real person.

2. Just-in-time support

Another use case is for people working non-traditional hours. People who work the night shift often have trouble finding a therapist who can accommodate them. For people suffering from depression, anxiety and panic attacks, timely support is important.

3. Reduce costs

Finally, access to mental health care is still considered a luxury by many. For example, in the United States, a one-hour consultation with a professional can cost between $65 and $250. Considering that effective mental health treatment typically lasts one to three hours per week and takes at least several months, it's easy to understand that this process is inaccessible to many people. Chatbots can lower the price of consultations by cutting travel and phone bills.

Limitations of Chatbots

Despite these benefits, there are some limitations to using chatbots. The biggest drawback lies in the technical limitations of AI systems. Even today, chatbots often struggle to understand the nuances of human language.

1. Reading Emotions

For therapy, reading correctly is not only about what is being said, but also about reading the underlying feelings and emotions , which is critical to successfully obtaining the desired results. Most AI systems simply cannot handle these two tasks as well as humans. Emotions can be sensed through image or speech recognition as they are highly context-dependent. But it’s difficult for a chatbot to locate itself relying solely on text messages.

As a result, we are unable to determine the chatbot's ability to provide clear and appropriate responses to patient requests and to communicate and get to the heart of the issue, which is unacceptable when reporting life-threatening situations.

#2. Privacy

Another major issue related to the use of chatbots in healthcare is privacy. Developers must take effective measures to ensure that data sharing does not expose users to any privacy risks.

How can providers improve chatbots?

Artificial intelligence in mental health care could change the lives of millions of people. Here are some actionable insights to help you ensure you’re meeting your users’ needs:

• Improve your natural language processing (NLP) processes.
• Self-supervised learning in artificial intelligence can help improve chatbots’ ability to understand patients. It combines the best of supervised and unsupervised learning, allowing the program to learn what one part of the input means using another part of the input. This applies perfectly to NLP.
• Make it a golden rule to collect conversation success metrics and monitor them regularly. By collecting records of failed conversations, you can track your system's flaws and continually improve it.
• You can also create post-conversation polls where users can evaluate the conversation.
• Get humans involved.
• Since you know chatbots won’t work perfectly all the time, make sure users who are experiencing communication issues have the ability to connect with a human professional if needed.

Take advantage of the benefits

By implementing state-of-the-art AI methods, using effective monitoring metrics and analytics, and involving humans when necessary, you AI chatbots can be leveraged to bring mental health benefits such as anonymity, timely support and reduced costs for users.

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