Big data, artificial intelligence, and the future of mental health research

Abstract

Sir, It is undeniable that with advances in big data, artificial intelligence (AI) can make better predictions and decisions about human behavior. Thus, this ability is reflected in the field of mental health science, with significant advantages that AI can provide for data management, becoming indispensable for any researcher and health professional to handle large amounts of data. This feature has been introduced on investigations because of AI's potential to generate significant results that would be impossible to have with a smaller volume of data.[1] Hence, new discoveries can be made more quickly and precisely than previously. Furthermore, AI can be applied in several mental health fields because of its potential to understand complex events like a pandemic and its pattern recognition.[2] Thereby, those features make the analysis process less exhaustive and allow the researcher to focus on critical issues, providing more reliable information to the analysis process. In particular, progress has been made when influenza-related search queries on Google were automatically detected, providing a large amount of data, which propitiates predictions to reduce the process of spreading the virus of influenza.[3] Similarly, big data could be used for interventions surrounding the impact of a pandemic on people's behavior worldwide. Thus, AI is a promising tool for getting more vast mental health results. In fact, large amounts of data processed by AI have already been used in psychological studies concerning the human mind. First, big data were used to analyze that people with serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, suffer from higher mortality, providing comparisons on age, diagnosis, gender, and ethnicity.[4] One year later, the same author discovered through big data that people with that severe condition also have a lower life expectancy than smokers. As so, AI was used to show the reality surrounding the late diagnosis of bipolar disorder.[5] Thus, big data are a growing tendency on studies about the human mind and behavior, as although AI cannot replace the role of investigator, it is expected to revolutionize mental health science by changing the way investigators collect and analyze data. Hence, this transition will be based on algorithm analysis, avoiding bias on the intervention, and focusing on the information provided by big data. Ergo, we predict that future researchers shall learn how to program and articulate data analysis, because of the growth of big data, with more extensive and diverse databases, making AI one of the columns of most investigations. In fact, we may say that AI will end psychological science as we know it and bring the advent of structural changes in how to learn and execute investigations. Therefore, AI is the propellant to overcome contemporary psychology and introduce postmodernity psychology. This new era is coming and will allow investigators to accomplish more precise and vast studies, with more applicable results to a broader part of the population. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest.