Do you think mental health provision can be helped or harmed by technology?
Do you think mental health provision can be helped or harmed by technology?
This week is Mental Health Awareness Week and we’ve been reflecting on what ethical, expressive behaviour-sensing technology can do for people living with a mental illness and for the professionals treating them?
The premise is simple: mental health conditions can cause changes in expressive behaviour. Emerging face and voice analysis technology can accurately and objectively measure these changes in expressive behaviour using facial muscle actions, gaze direction, tone of voice etc, and if used well can help to determine the presence and severity of mental health conditions. It's not perfect, yet. It will take time for this technology to be fully mature and be incorporated into clinical (or non-clinical) pathways, but we’re excited about the potential!
Some of the things we think this type of technology can excel at are:
Early detection of deteriorating mental health, because it can be embedded in useful and engaging app tasks. This enables an earlier intervention that uses fewer clinician resources to administer.
Monitoring of the severity of a diagnosed condition using repeatable, objective measures that avoid issues such as questionnaire fatigue or being able to get the outcome you want on a questionnaire.
Finding the right treatment faster by monitoring the severity of a condition after a treatment is prescribed, allowing a clinician to more confidently and faster stop a treatment that doesn’t work and try another.
Sidesteps the stigma that’s still associated with mental health. People living with a mental illness are sometimes worried that their concerns aren’t real or that going to a doctor could have negative consequences. Non-judgmental technology could reassure them and encourage them to seek help.
Currently, except for wellness apps, there is hardly any technology used in mental health clinical pathways. That is something that we hope will change soon.
What do you think? We want to learn from your experience. Are you a healthcare professional and:
Someone who has been affected by mental health issues yourself?
Wondered why there wasn't any technology to support mental health provision?
Do you have strong ideas of how technology could help or harm clinical pathways?
Do you have any worries about this technology going mainstream?
Or, do you want mental health provision to stay the way it is today?