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Episode 9: Fighting Mental Health Issues: Combining Emotional Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Data Overflow

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3 ans ago

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In a world overflowing with speed, traffic jams, car horns, huge work overloads, and bad news, people find themselves submerged by negativity and stressful incidents. It’s not surprising, and alarming, that nearly one billion people worldwide suffer from mental health disorders. Every 40 seconds, a person dies by suicide.

These numbers are getting higher by the rapid emergence of a global pandemic. In fact, the loss of a loved one, the fear of being contaminated or of contaminating those around them, and the increasing scarcity of social relationships are major factors that make people prone to anxiety, stress, overthinking, depression and trauma.

Despite all these discouraging facts, science continues to evolve and find a solution to every problem. By making mental health a topic of concern, AI has gone one step further in its research and innovations to finally create systems helping people deal with stress and depression. These tools are built based on deep learning models, voice and image recognition, and natural language processing, in order to analyze and monitor people’s behaviors and emotions. By recognizing tone and speed of speech, the AI systems can track stress levels and identify the persons who are struggling with mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression.  This seems a huge step when talking about emotional artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, the power of Machine Learning does not only lie in its ability to diagnose mental health problems but another alternative that focuses on therapy is now being developed.

Therapeutic AI Chatbots offer indeed a sort of therapy directed to the concerned persons. Moodkit, Woebot, and Wysa are all mental health chatbots that offer cognitive insights and behavioral change based on cognitive-behavioral techniques, one of the most heavily researched clinical approaches to treating depression.

Let’s take the example of Woebot. This free chatbot uses natural language processing and sentiment analysis to interpret a user’s input and generate personalized responses. To make things simple, imagine you’re conversing with a friend but not a common one. Actually, this friend asks you direct questions in order to assess your thoughts and mood and hence help you re-evaluate your thought patterns.

In essence, a Woebot user will receive individualized responses that are usually useful tips aiming to modify one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. The pictures below show examples of Woebot chatting with users:

Generally speaking, AI therapeutic chatbots were of great help to their users. There has often been positive feedback about the effectiveness of these AI-based applications. Woebot, for example, has shown a significant decrease in anxiety and depression among its users in 2 weeks only.

According to psychologists, these AI tools can help a lot with some mental health issues. However, medical assistance is a major process essential in overcoming mental health problems especially when the individual suffers from severe symptoms (e.g. Major Depressive Disorder) that would likely require a higher level of care.

On that account, it’s not about AI manipulating us or replacing humans as some may think. Still, on the other hand, this much success gained by AI Chatbots leads to some questions we should ask ourselves. Are we really doing well? Are we taking the time to listen to the people around us? Do we try to understand them, to comfort them? Or, are we so consumed by work, money, and social media that we no longer ask about the ones we love to the point that they choose to talk to a machine over opening up to us? The purpose of this questioning is not to enter into a circle of self-blame but to rethink our behavior towards our loved ones.

Let’s listen to each other. Let’s notice the persons around us whom mental health issues are kept untold and let’s accompany them in taking adequate therapy because everyone needs help and support and no one should bear the weight of mental disorders alone.

Resources:
Treating Your Stress with AI Technology
10 octobre 2020: C’est la journée mondiale de la santé mentale
Woebot: A Professional Review

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Sciences et technologie

Chapter 2 : England, the Discovery of Vaccines.

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1 an ago

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11 février 2023 [simplicity-save-for-later]

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Fast breathing, clenched fists, and hunched shoulders are common signs of tension that most people show as the vaccination syringe approaches the body whilst 300 years ago people took the same syringe with great joy and hope.
The reason is that we are clueless of what humanity endured before the « blessing » of vaccines came to light.
Let me tell you the tale of one of humankind’s greatest inventions through the eyes of a time walker. This invention actually underwent a lengthy process of discovery, development, and improvement that lasted for centuries.

And our wanderer walked down the lane of the 1700s, when English physician Edward Jenner overheard a girl boasting to her friend that she would not contract smallpox because she had already contracted cowpox and she will have a flawless face free from pox blisters.

The doctor thought that the idea was brilliant even though it seemed silly.
Why not provide cowpox vaccination instead of the usual inoculation which involved inserting fresh smallpox material, such as blisters from a sick individual, under the skin of a nonimmune person considering that 3 percent of people died due to variolation using the previous method?
Smallpox and cowpox both belong to the same family « poxviridae » and once the disease is transferred from cows to people, it became weakened
In order to give the immune system the memory it needs to fight smallpox once it enters the body, the doctor came up with the brilliant idea of infecting his patients with cowpox, which is contagious but much less dangerous than what smallpox can do to a human. He called this procedure « the variolae vaccine » and performed it on a boy for the first time. In 1796, at that same time, the idea of a modern vaccination was born. The boy lived and showed no signs of smallpox. And Edward Jenner branded himself as « the father of immunology » in history.
From that time until 1850, vaccination evolved, and then the arm-to-arm vaccination practice emerged, posing a safety concern because this new method of immunization allows for the transmission of bacteria and other diseases from one person to another.
Sydney Cooper, a microbiologist, discovered in 1896 that adding glycerin to the blistering agent used during the procedure could make this vaccination safer.
As a result, scientists were able to create the vaccine « dryvax, » which was used in the 1967 big WHO vaccination campaign that was a complete success.
The smallpox was eradicated, and research continued in the years that followed to reduce the vaccine’s side effects and make it more effective.
With knowledge, observation, try and error as well as the absurd notion of a normal girl, which we can term « luck » and the culminated work of many minds, many hands, many hearts during hundreds of years, this holly tool of science was created.
People like us who were born in an era where a new vaccine could be developed in one or one and a half year to stop a worldwide pandemic are unable to appreciate the blessing that this discovery brought to the world.

One of the deadliest diseases in human history, smallpox is believed to have killed hundreds of millions of people throughout history with a death rate of 30%, compared to coronavirus’s 3%, just to imagine the nightmare it caused to humanity; the battle that humans won against it is one of history’s greatest victories.
Granted with hardiness and protection, waiting for the secret work of a needle in their bodies, with calm breaths and relaxed shoulders people received their vaccine.
May humanity always strive in preserving a world rich of life and vitality.

Written By : Nada Arfaoui.

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