Exploring Artificial Intelligence's Role in Mental Health Through Language Models

If you're curious about how AI is revolutionizing mental health support, one of the big hurdles is learning the language! Terms like Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Models (NLMs), chatbots, and Chat GPT all get thrown into the mix. But what do they mean? And how do they relate to your own mental health journey?

In the first part of a three-part series aimed at demystifying AI's role in mental health, we focus on the essential vocabulary needed to navigate this innovative field.

Concepts like the ones I listed above are crucial for understanding how AI can interpret and respond conversationally to human language, which is particularly important when discussing mental health applications.

Topics include:

• An explanation of key terms that we'll be using throughout this mini-series
• How natural language processing allows computers to understand human language, using a personal example of "twerk anxiety"!
• The role that natural language models can have in providing support, and an introduction to virtual therapy assistants and chatbots
• How a large language model like Chat GPT generates responses and learns from data

By grasping concepts like NLP, NLMs, and Chat GPT, you will be better able to comprehend the impact of AI on mental health care. Over the next episodes, we will further explore this evolving landscape.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Reach the National Suicide Prevention Line (USA) by dialing 988 on your phone or 800-273-TALK (800-273-8255).
• Contact the Trevor Project (for suicide prevention and overall mental well-being of young LGBTQ lives) at https://www.thetrevorproject.org or call 866-488-7386. 
• For anyone outside the USA, see https://befrienders.org/

To learn more foundational terms used in AI: Listen to Episode 7 of the Women's Digital Health podcast: Artificial Intelligence in Women's Health

Subscribe to the Women's Digital Health Podcast wherever you're listening right now. And please share the podcast with anyone from your community who will benefit.

Disclaimer
The information in this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment.

The personal views expressed by guests on Women's Digital Health are their own. Their inclusion here does not constitute an endorsement from Dr. Brandi, Women's Digital Health, or associated organizations.

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Transcript

Dr. Brandi, what's a language model? And what does that have to do with mental health? Yeah, these are the questions I'm getting sent my way. And we're definitely gonna answer that question plus more. Because in this episode, we are discussing the use of artificial intelligence in mental health. First, we need to review some vocab vittles. What terms do you need to know when discussing AI and mental health? We'll introduce terms like natural language processing, natural language models, chatbots, and chat GPT. In preparing for this episode, I felt like it was best for us to divide the conversation about artificial intelligence into a three-part series. This gives us an opportunity to really understand vocabulary, which is the first episode. Number two, to understand who are users of artificial intelligence in mental health. And lastly, to understand its impact. And so the next three episodes will be a series of our artificial intelligence and mental health. used to serve as a guide and a reference for those who really want to learn about how artificial intelligence is being used in mental health. 

This episode is a great resource if you're trying to learn more about how artificial intelligence and you're curious about what AI could do for your mental health. Welcome to the Women's Digital Health Podcast, a podcast dedicated to learning more about new digital technologies in women's health. We discuss convenient and accessible solutions that support women with common health conditions. Join us as we explore innovations like mobile health applications, sensors, telehealth, and artificial intelligence, plus more. Learn from a board-certified anesthesiologist the best tips to filling some of your health experience gaps throughout life's journey. 

Welcome back to episode 13. And in this episode, we will focus on the use of artificial intelligence in mental health. As we discussed in episode 11 and 12, the use of technology like mental health apps and tele-mental health is growing rapidly as a response to the gap between the demand for mental health professionals and the need to respond to a mental health crisis in the United States. 90% of Americans responded to a survey from the American Psychological Association in 2023 believing that we are currently in a mental health crisis. And 30% of adults from that same survey said they had recently experienced anxiety and had ongoing anxiety. And over 30% of responders also mentioned that when they were trying to find help for their anxiety, they had difficulty finding it. The need for more supportive services in mental health is immense. So where does AI fit in? To start, we must begin with vocabulary. So we get it. If you're learning about artificial intelligence on the spot and you need to catch up with the beginner's guide to AI, check out episode seven. We make it super easy using a dance example to help you understand terms like neural networks and deep learning. In this episode, we will still be using dance, and we're going to talk about a particular type of dance called twerking to describe how AI is being used in mental health. 

Before we explore some of these vocabulary terms, I want to say that I take mental health and this epidemic very seriously. And if you're having a tough time right now, please talk to someone. The National Suicide Prevention Line can be contacted in the U.S. by dialing 988 or 800-273-TALK or 800-273-TALK. The Trevor Project is a suicide prevention line and overall mental well-being number that is specific to the LGBTQ community. You can contact them at 866-488-7386. And for anyone outside the U.S. that's listening to this podcast, check out Befrienders, B-E-F-R I-E-N-D-E-R-S.org for mental health professional resources in the international community. 

So the first term we're going to discuss is natural language processing or NLP. And we're going to use the dance example from episode seven. Now, the scenario that I'm going to offer you is a personal one, and it's somewhat humorous, but it's real. This is a real experience that I kind of have, and I'm sharing with you to help you understand natural language processing. So the scenario is I just came back from the Beyonce concert. And if you went to her most recent concert, you were inspired by her dancers. They were fantastic. They inspired me to twerk. 

Now, if you don't know what twerking is, twerking is a type of dancing that comes from the African-American community of New Orleans. Probably started in the early 90s around the time of the rise of bounce music. And if you know anything about twerking, You know, you have to move your hips and you have to move your gluteus maximus with exceptional skill. Now there's a host of controversy around twerking and I'm going to save that for a separate episode. But irrefutably, Beyonce and her dancers have practiced and learn so many dances and they move without missing a beat to twerking. So someone says after the concert, Beyonce's dancing was wonderful. Let's have a dance party and be ready to twerk. All right. So already I'm going to bow out. I'm nervous. I'm embarrassed because I can't twerk. I mean, I want to be social, but yeah, I'm going to pass on this one. And, you know, someone, you know, sends me an encouraging text and offers to teach me, but I'm going to be honest, it's still very anxiety provoking. What do I do? I mean, like, are there any twerk anxiety apps that exist? The answer is no, I search online. 

When I put in twerk anxiety into the search engine, My list includes mental health apps that start advertising, local mental health professionals that are in my location, as well as videos on how to twerk, as well as blog articles on how twerking actually relieves anxiety. How did this happen? Natural language processing is the form of artificial intelligence that helps the computer understand what a keyword like anxiety or a phrase like twerk anxiety means. Using coding in the form of algorithms or recipes A computer recognizes a text phrase like twerk anxiety to understand your tone or your emotions behind your twerk anxiety. 

Your search engine is a computer that's using natural language processing algorithms or these recipes to try to figure out, one, your intention. Like, how serious is this twerk anxiety to Dr. Brandy? Is she really stressed out about this twerk anxiety? And number two, context. Is Dr. Brandy using any other term that may require escalation of support to address her twerk anxiety? What other words is she using to determine that this twerk anxiety is going to prevent her from doing her daily activities? More on how artificial intelligence is tracking your daily activities to determine your mental health state later. 

Hey listeners, it's Dr. Brandi. Thanks for listening to this episode of Women's Digital Health. Subscribe to Women's Digital Health on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to know even more about how to use technology to improve your health, subscribe to our newsletter on womensdigitalhealth.com. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Enjoy the rest of this episode. 

Okay, so great. Natural language processing means that computers can understand humans. But how do humans even know this? Well, natural language modeling, or NLM, that's a specific type of natural language processing that helps the computer talk back to humans. So let's go back to our twerk anxiety example. When natural language modeling tries to help someone with twerk anxiety, it might generate language that is supportive of my anxiety. Natural language modeling, the goal here is to say, I get you, human. I understand you. I understand your emotion and your intention around your anxiety of twerking. And I want to respond to your concern using your language. So perhaps natural language models direct me to a dance coach who can give me calming and supportive things that can specifically address my uneasiness around twerking. Maybe it directs me to a virtual twerk anxiety coach. 

Now, Virtual twerk anxiety coaches, these are computer generated assistance that come up with relaxing and supportive language that helps simplify the steps of twerking. Maybe it starts with a dance coach who's trained Beyonce and is culturally sensitive to the twerking culture and can offer assurance that if I twerk every day, if I practice every day, I can get almost close to a Beyonce dancer. These virtual twerk anxiety coaches or virtual therapy assistants, they can also refer me to twerk anxiety forums where I meet other twerk anxious people and they can give me local contact information to get in touch with twerk anxiety dance coaches. They're also called chatbots. These chatbots are computer-generated tools that use natural language modeling and natural language processing to tell anxious twerkers, I get you. You can use your own language to help you get the help that you need. Language is at the core of the use of artificial intelligence in mental health. 

Before we end this episode, I wanted to let you know that I'll be hosting future workshops to dive deeper into the conversation on mental health. To get announcements on dates of these future workshops, please sign up for our newsletter at women'sdigitalhealth.com. In our next workshop, we will focus on improving your mental health through technology while staying safe. Additionally, if you found this episode helpful, please, please, please rate us and give us a review wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. 

All right, so we're going to wrap up this episode by discussing large language models in Chat GPT. Now that you know what natural language processing and natural language models and chatbots mean, I'm just going to add that ChatGPT is a specific type of natural language model owned by a company called OpenAI. More specifically, ChatGPT is a language model called a large language model. And this type of artificial intelligence is a artificial intelligence that learns language from large language data sets. ChatGPT is a large language model that stands for Generative Preformed Transformers. 

If I go back to the example of me using a chatbot to talk about twerk anxiety, and I'm using ChatGPT, it means that I'm using OpenAI's large language model specifically. If I asked ChatGPT, how should I handle twerk anxiety? There are three qualities that it will use. The first quality is that it can generate, or the G in ChatGPT. It can automatically generate a response like, I understand you. How do large language models generate a response? Well, that's the second quality. It has learned or has pre-trained itself, that's the P, pre-trained, on data sets that come from all over the internet. pre-trains on enormous language data sets that are usually open source. Reddit, Wikipedia, Facebook, online books. These are all sources of data that large language models like Chats GPT have learned to speak how humans speak. Its third quality is its ability to transform, or T, in Chat GPT. It's learned to transform language into words that are conversational, that actually mean something to me. Saying something like, I get you, that's the conversational part of Chat GPT. So generative pre-trained transformers are artificial intelligence, large language models that generate responses because it's pre-trained or it's learned on large language data sets to transform language into conversational words that I can relate to and understand. 

Alrighty, I hope these vocabulary terms in the context of twerk anxiety helps you better understand how artificial intelligence is being used in mental health. We've talked about natural language processing, natural language models, chat GPT, and chatbots. In our next episode, we will answer the question, who are the users of artificial intelligence in mental health? Now that you have these terms, it's going to go a whole lot easier because now you can apply these examples and understand what's happening. 

That wraps up episode 13, where you learned important words like language model and how it applies to mental health. I look forward to connecting with you again on episode 14. In the near term, make sure you like us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. Bye for now. 

Although I'm a board-certified physician, I am not your physician. All content and information on this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice and it does not establish a doctor-patient relationship by listening to this podcast. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you heard on this podcast. The personal views of our podcast guests on women's digital health are their own and do not replace medical professional advice