From finance and law to farming and construction, technology is changing everything, and healthcare is no exception. Perhaps more than any other branch of medicine, the field of mental health care has benefitted massively from the advent of the internet, AI, and robotics.
Once upon a time, studying psychology meant attending physical classes; now, the next generation of counselors can enroll in an online Masters in Education Counseling. But that’s just the beginning.
Robotics
Robots might not be the first line of defense in the fight against mental health issues, but believe it or not, some people are seeing real benefits from interacting with our shiny new mechanical friends.
Robots have been used for a wide variety of applications in the mental health industry, often with signs of real promise, and in some cases even providing improvement in groups of patients who have historically responded poorly to traditional therapies and assistance.
One such case is in patients who have been diagnosed with autism. Autism patients are notoriously difficult to treat, sometimes even for very experienced therapists, largely due to their difficulties with communication and theory of mind.
Patients with autism often find it very difficult to put themselves in others’ shoes, and their default mode of communication is one that many neurotypical people find off-putting or even aggressive.
Patients who are severely autistic have a difficult time controlling their emotions and impulses, and are indeed at times physically aggressive.
But for some reason, patients with autism seem to respond very well to robots.
A study in RAT, or Robot Assisted Therapy, indicated that robots with responsive facial features, the ability to express both simple and complex emotions, systems that allow it to sense and interpret an autistic child’s actions, and can alter its behavior based on parameters chosen by professionals have serious promise for helping autistic children.
These children would seemingly benefit from further improvement in robotics technology as they learn to mimic natural facial expressions and learn other social protocols that come naturally to neurotypical individuals, but even the modest options available as of 2022 show promise.
Another literature review focusing on humanoid robots and their interaction with children with autism revealed that the bulk of studies done since 2016 demonstrated further promising results.
All of these results suggest that children with autism find robots easier to learn from than people, likely as a result of the predictability and consistency of robot behavior as compared to that of neurotypical therapists, as well as their patience and lack of emotions.
These are aspects of interacting with neurotypical people that can be overwhelming for people on the autistic spectrum, and are much easier for robots than humans to accommodate.
Mass Production
Robots have shown so much potential in helping children with autism learn more about normal social interaction that there is now a well-funded industry creating robots specifically for children with autism.
The robot named NAO, pictured above, is a robot that is equipped with a wide variety of sensors that help it interact with its environment, and is equipped with software that helps it engage in Applied Behavioral Analysis to help diagnose and treat children with autism.
The company LuxAI is now mass producing and selling a robot called QTRobot that is being used to help autistic children learn and mimic facial expressions associated with specific emotions, and also provides a level of companionship.
People with autism are not the only mental health patients beneficiaries of robotics.
Robotic tools have also been used in diagnostic processes for diagnosing and assessing the severity of major depressive disorder, treating anxiety disorders, and even, perhaps counterintuitively, conversing with schizophrenic patients.
Hopefully we will continue to find new and novel uses for robots, and improve these technologies to assist people suffering from such debilitating disorders.
Artificial Intelligence
While AI is used in some form in many of the robots we’ve discussed, disembodied AI systems are also making an impact on many people’s lives. As in most medical fields, the availability of mental healthcare professionals has historically always fallen short of the demand.
Luckily, unlike people, AI technologies are infinitely scalable, and don’t require time off, meaning they can be made constantly and consistently available, a benefit that is hard to calculate for those struggling with mental health issues.
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AI has created a veritable revolution in the field of remote counseling, as demonstrated by multiple studies aimed at helping provide accessible, convenient, and effective care for mental health patients.
With the dawn of large language models, known colloquially as LLMs, like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, a human-like chat experience can be provided to people who need mental healthcare on-demand.
This is especially useful for episodic conditions like depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety and schizophrenia, since patients can experience fluctuations in their symptoms, and may not have access to a human therapist when their symptoms intensity and their need for therapy is greatest.
While enabling the availability of care is vitally important, improving the quality of mental healthcare is just as crucial, if not even moreso. As it turns out, AI has a role to play here, as well.
In the largest ever study of its kind, the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that an AI trained on over 160,000 counseling sessions and 20 million messages between patients and their healthcare professionals has shown extreme promise in assisting therapists to provide their patients superior treatment.
AI’s ability to take notes during sessions, reference past sessions, and compare patient data to thousands of other patients has shown undeniable benefits in the reported outcomes of patients treated with the assistance of AI.
The progress demonstrated in the use of AI and robotics in mental healthcare is undeniable.
As we come to better understand the complex and varied needs of different mental health conditions, these technologies can help us adapt to patients and overcome bottlenecks in availability and human capabilities that would otherwise be left unaddressed.
Hopefully the future will bring further progress, and even more hope for those who need it most.
