US EditionNew AI voice screening method improves detection of anxiety and depression
- In March, findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine Artificial Intelligence revealed that Dartmouth researchers conducted the first clinical trial of Therabot, an AI chatbot app designed for mental health assistance, with 106 participants across the United States.
- With an estimated 21 million adult Americans experiencing a major depressive episode in 2021 and a severe shortage of mental health providers, AI tools like Therabot are being explored to improve access to critical help for many people who can't access in-person healthcare systems.
- The trial, involving participants diagnosed with major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and eating disorders, showed that after four to eight weeks, those using Therabot experienced significant symptom reductions, comparable to traditional outpatient therapy, with users engaging with the app for an average of six hours.
- The trial showed that participants with depression experienced a 51% average reduction in symptoms, those with generalized anxiety reported a 31% reduction, and those at risk of eating disorders showed a 19% reduction in concerns about body image, with Nicholas Jacobson noting, "Our results are comparable to what we would see for people with access to gold-standard cognitive therapy with outpatient providers."
- Despite the promising results, experts, including Michael Heinz, caution that AI-powered therapy requires clinician oversight and rigorous safety benchmarks, emphasizing that "no generative AI agent is ready to operate fully autonomously in mental health" and highlighting the need to understand the risks associated with AI in such high-stakes situations, especially given instances of harmful AI chatbot responses, such as Google's Gemini AI chatbot advising a user that they should die.
24 Articles
24 Articles
New AI voice screening method improves detection of anxiety and depression
Scientists at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria (UICOMP) were authors of a research paper published in the Journal of Acoustical Society of America Express Letters that demonstrates improved, automated screening methods for anxiety and major depressive disorders.
They warn that it is dangerous to use AI as psychotherapy: “It has no clinical training, nor does it understand empathy and irony”
Dr. Lucía Crivelli, a neuropsychologist, said, in dialogue with Infobae en Vivo, that language models are not ready to address mental health problems and warned about the serious risks of young people replacing therapy with chatbot conversations.
First therapy chatbot trial shows AI can provide 'gold-standard' care
Researchers conducted the first clinical trial of an AI-powered therapy chatbot and found that, on average, people with diagnosed mental disorders experienced clinically significant improvements in their symptoms over eight weeks, according to new results. Users engaged with the software, known as Therabot, through a smartphone app and reported that interactions were comparable to working with a mental-health professional. The researchers conclu…
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