Be it resolved: The future of mental health is big data

A Facebook algorithm that tracks posts for suicidal thoughts; an app that monitors the speed of keyboard strokes for signs of depression; a computer program that analyzes our facial expressions and tone of voice when we FaceTime. These are a few of the thousands of algorithms tracking our mental health that some experts say could revolutionize how we diagnose and treat mental illness. They say that our 24/7 use of digital devices is generating a goldmine of information about our mental state that must be accessible to mental health practitioners if psychiatric medicine is to operate like a scientific discipline in the 21st century. Instagram posts, text logs, Google searches, and GPS data, and not psychiatrists’ observations and intuitions based on conversation, offer the detail and time stamped precision we need to generate tailored and effective treatments to the millions of individuals who desperately need help in the post pandemic world. Critics say the problems with this big data approach go far beyond the obvious privacy issues that come with outsourcing mental health monitoring to digital monopolies like Google and Apple. The push for mental health algorithms reflects a reductive view of human emotions that undermines the strengths of the traditionally human centred field of psychiatric medicine. Diagnoses based on dialogue between two individuals and grounded in intuition and empathy will always be better than machine intelligence at drawing out the personal histories that explain trauma and generate helpful treatment. Engaging machines to address the mental health crisis is nothing but a quick fix solution that only helps the deeply underresourced health systems of our world today.

Arguing for the motion is Daniel Barron, Medical Director of the Interventional Pain Psychiatry Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and the author of the recently published book Reading Our Minds: The Rise of Big-Data Psychiatry.

Arguing against the motion is Gerhard Gründer, Professor of Psychiatry and Head of the Department for Molecular Neuroimaging at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. He is the author of How Do We Want to Live?

Sources: CBSDFW, CBS Boston, The Doctors Company

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