The contemporary hectic lifestyle has given birth to mental disorders such as stress, anxiety, and depression. According to a report generated by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the majority of youth in the US commit suicide because of over-stressing or depression, making suicide the second leading cause of death in the country.
Not only in the US, but people from all across the globe are suffering from emotional imbalance, which is impacting their overall physical health and endurance. Mental disorders not only increases an individual’s health spending, but they also bring down the quality of life for them.
This isn’t a good sign at all and needs to be addressed quickly. But the question is how to get rid of these tensions without paying multiple visits to psychologists and mental therapists? Well, technology can be the best way to treat this situation and you can use different advanced AI tools and solutions which are specifically built to make you feel better.
The realm of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is constantly evolving and soon it can be the game changer for boosting the mental health of people. Mobility in healthcare, specifically AI, is bringing psychotherapy closer to people who actually need it. However, you must do a thorough analysis before using any of these tools in order to get their optimum benefit.
In order to make you aware of how AI tools and products can help you in maintaining your mental sanity, let’s look at five major ways in which such software can help you in changing your thoughts for the better or even analyzing a voice for signs of despair.
1. Instant & Affordable Virtual Therapists & Chatbots
In the market, you can find several chatbots another brainchild of AI who can help you to make you feel better and happier. For example, Woebot is an intuitive chatbot developed by a team of Stanford researchers. The idea was given by Alison Darcy who is a famous psychologist and the founder of Woebot Labs. The chatbot can be your on-call emotional helper which can be an ideal companion in situations where you want an unbiased, non-judgemental listener.
As per a study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, many people who interacted with this bot have seen a significant reduction in their symptoms of depression against patients who were given an eBook on mental fitness.
This AI product is especially helpful to people who live in metropolitan areas and stressed out due to their chaotic routine. Its primary motive isn’t to identify a mood disorder but to accompany people when they feel anxious, depressed, and alone.
Ellie is another virtual therapist built by the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT). The solution is specifically meant for helping people suffering from anxiety, stress, and depression. But the unique feature of this tool is that it can detect not only verbal but non-verbal cues also such as postures, gesture, facial expressions, etc.
The major benefit of these virtual therapists and chatbots is that people can express themselves freely in front of them. But they usually hesitate when speaking with a human therapist.
In addition to Woebot and Ellie, mobile app developers and caregivers are continuously working to build many other similar mobile applications. Talkspace is another app in the same category but the only difference is that it connects needy ones to a human therapist and not a bot. Patients and doctors can have discussions through texts, audio, video calls, etc.
2. Advanced Software Solutions With A Magical Power To Sense Your Mood
Other than virtual therapist bots, AI has also encouraged entrepreneurs and programmers to create specific software solutions that can help a person to cope up with a depressing or stressed out situations.
For instance, a renowned voice analytics software company Cogitocorp has developed an AI-powered software that has the potential to analyze one’s mood. It works on the principles of neural networks to spot whether the speaker is disheartened or not.
Apart from being a primary screening aid tool for nurse practitioners, it can be helpful to people by making them aware of their mental well-being. They can learn the signs of depression and can act accordingly to treat the disorder.
To our surprise, the primary goal of the software is to help call centre workers to enhance their communication skills. Basically, it listens to the conversation these professionals have with human beings and provide them with visual clues to help them in doing their job better.
When exploring what’s hidden in the future, you will get to know about another plan an AI startup Mindstrong has in its arsenal. They want to transform your smartphone into emotional diagnostics gadgets.
The basic idea behind this unique idea is to leverage on the biometric data provided by mobile devices and analyze it in order to form a picture of your mental state. The product is still in its ideation phase but once executed it could be a magical mood detector tool for people.
Another example of instant emotional support is Ginger.io which is a platform based on machine learning and a clinical network operating at the backdrop. It helps depressed and anxious patients to connect with clinicians for getting relief at the right time. Here, you can find several medical practitioners offering 24*7 online support by giving Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), training on resilience, and mindfulness.
The platform is constantly getting updated by the parent company mutually with the help of experienced therapists, coaches, and psychologists. With each person’s progress, the platform is becoming much more improved and scalable. Initially, it provides the patient with three emotional support coaches to support them emotionally when they are weak. But the patients can also connect with licensed therapists or psychologists whenever they need.
After exploring the above-mentioned AI tools and solutions, it’s quite clear that technology can definitely provide patients with individualized emotional support whenever they need. Also, it would be interesting to see how the technology will be implemented in the near future to help people in maintaining their mental health.