Digital Mental Health: Role of Artificial Intelligence in Psychotherapy
Digital Mental Health: Role of Artificial Intelligence in Psychotherapy
Keywords:
artificial intelligence, psychotherapy, online counsellingAbstract
It is estimated that 6 to 7% of population suffers from mental disorders. WHO reported that one in four families is likely to have at least one member with a behavioral or mental disorder (WHO, 2001). Post pandemic the world has experienced a huge surge in the mental health issues. Unfortunately not everyone is able to access the available mental health services due to constraints like lack of financial assistance, living in remote areas, fear of being stigmatized and lack of awareness. The emergence of online mental health services could solve some of the these problems, as these are easily accessible to the people from anywhere, are cost effective and also, the fear of being judged or labeled is quite reduced in online service. A lot of efforts are being done today to integrate Artificial Intelligence with the traditional form of psychotherapy. The role of chatbots for mental health services in the form of e-therapies have been found to be highly relevant and important (Gratzer & Goldbloom 2020). The present study aims to systematically review the evidence on the use of AI based methods for treating mental health issues. Overall, 95 studies were extracted using some of the pupolar databases like Mendley, Pubmed, Psychinfo and DOAJ. The terms used to search included psychotherapy, online therapies, Artificial Intelligence, online counselling. Finally, after screening , 13 studies were selected based on the eligibility criteria. Most of these studies had employed conversational agents as intervention. The results obtained showed the significant positive consequences of using AI based approach in treating mental health issues. The study strongly suggests for integrating AI with the traditional form of counseling.
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