Three Flavorings for a Soup to Cure what Ails Mental Health Services

Adm Policy Ment Health. 2020 Sep;47(5):844-851. doi: 10.1007/s10488-020-01060-z.

Abstract

With new tools from artificial intelligence and new perspectives on personalizing interventions, we could revolutionize the way mental health services are delivered and achieve major gains in improving the public's mental health. We examine Dr. Bickman's vision around these technological and paradigm changes that would usher in major scientific, workforce training, and societal cultural changes. We argue that additional efforts in research evaluations in implementation have the potential to scale up and adapt existing interventions and scale them out to diverse populations and service systems. The next stage of this work involves testing the effectiveness of personalized interventions that are preferred by the public and integrating these choices into sustainable service systems. We note cautions on the delivery of these programs as automated algorithmic recommendations are heretofore foreign to humans.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; Implementation trials; Machine learning; Mental health services; N-of-1 designs; Personalized interventions; Scaling down; Scaling out; Scaling up.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Diffusion of Innovation
  • Empathy
  • Health Services Research / organization & administration*
  • Humans
  • Mental Health Services / organization & administration*
  • Precision Medicine / methods
  • Quality Improvement / organization & administration*
  • Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / methods