The first clinical trial of an AI therapist showed significant improvements for people living with depression and anxiety to the same level as a human expert.
AI is being heavily pushed into the field of research and medical science. From drug discovery to diagnosing diseases, the results have been fairly encouraging. But when it comes to tasks where behavioral science and nuances come into the picture, things go haywire. It seems an expert-tuned approach is the best way forward.
Dartmouth College experts recently conducted the first clinical trial of an AI chatbot designed specifically for providing mental health assistance. Called Therabot, the AI assistant was tested in the form of an app among participants diagnosed with serious mental health problems across the United States.
“The improvements in symptoms we observed were comparable to what is reported for traditional outpatient therapy, suggesting this AI-assisted approach may offer clinically meaningful benefits,” notes Nicholas Jacobson, associate professor of biomedical data science and psychiatry at the Geisel School of Medicine. A massive progress
Broadly, users who engaged with the Therabot app reported a 51% average reduction in depression, which helped improve their overall well-being. A healthy few participants went from moderate to low tiers of clinical anxiety levels, and some even went lower than the clinical threshold for diagnosis.
As part of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) testing, the team recruited adults diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and people at clinically high risk for feeding and eating disorders (CHR-FED).
