Artificial intelligence could improve psychiatric care and make treatment shorter.
This is the opinion of researchers at Stockholm University who developed an AI, which should be able to function as an assistant to the psychologist.
– Here we look at facial expressions, head movements and we analyze the tone of voice, says Lennart Högman, who researches psychology at Stockholm University and runs the project.
Throughout the patient’s conversation with the psychologist, the AI tool records everything that happens. The camera films and everything that is said is converted into text.
Then the psychotherapist can go back to the conversation with his patient and see how he has handled the situations that arose:
– Here we look at facial expressions, head movements and we analyze the tone of voice, says Lennart Högman, who researches psychology at Stockholm University and runs the project.
Poor contact causes treatments to be interrupted
The AI analyzes how the contact between psychologist and patient feels, something that can be very important.
– 20-25 percent of all treatments are interrupted too early because patient and psychologist have lost contact with each other, says Lennart Högman.
By measuring how well the psychologist mirrors the patient’s facial expression, the AI gets a picture of how compassionate the psychologist is perceived by the patient.
– Then you can go into the diagrams and see where you have mirrored each other during this conversation and then you can move in the film to an occasion here when you both show joy quite clearly, Lennart Högman shows.
Important to have a compassionate psychologist
The AI can also help interpret the patient’s emotions, which should ideally become more positive over time.
Could an AI in the future manage the treatment completely by itself without a psychologist?
– No I do not think so. This is an assistant for psychotherapists, which can help them provide a better treatment. After all, we all know that we have different types of fallacies, we remember things wrong or we jump to conclusions and that is something that can be counteracted by this AI system.