AI can categorise mental status

Houston, Nov. 13: Researchers have developed a speech-based mobile app that uses artificial intelligence to categorize a patient’s mental health status, an advance that may lead to a tool to assist psychiatrists in diagnosing mental illnesses.

The study, published in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin, noted that many people in remote areas do not have access to psychiatrists or psychologists, and others can't afford to see a clinician frequently.

The researchers, including those from the University of Colorado at Boulder in the US, said therapists base their treatment plan largely on listening to a patient talk which they said was an old, subjective and unreliable method.

They developed a machine learning technology that can detect day-today changes in speech which hints at mental health decline.

As an example, they said, sentences that don't follow a logical pattern can be a critical symptom in schizophrenia.

Shifts in tone or pace may suggest mania or depression, and memory loss can be a sign of both cognitive and mental health problems, the researchers said.

“Language is a critical pathway to detecting patient mental states,” said study co-author Peter

Foltz from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“Using mobile devices and AI, we are able to track patients daily and monitor these subtle changes,” he added.

The study noted that the new mobile app asks patients a 5- to 10-minute series of questions which they can answer by talking into their phone.

The patients are asked about their emotional state, or to tell a short story, or to listen to a story and repeat it.

The app also gives them a series of touch-andswipe motor skills tests.