AI in Psychology

In the world of psychology, diagnosis is the most important, time consuming and difficult activity. Diagnosis of mental health cannot have a fixed procedure or some tests that could always be run to get conclusive output. Without timely knowledge of the impairment, it is difficult to advise treatment. In some cases, the delay may worsen the situation. The speed of diagnosis is decided by the amount of experience a psychologist has in the field. Even so, it takes time for even highly experienced professionals to come to a conclusion on what exactly the patient is facing. Unlike other medical sciences, the data gathered by psychologists is almost always in words and experiences rather than numbers. This adds an additional layer of difficulty. Numbers are easier to look at while reading past reports and they provide a clear picture of any situation. The luxury of numeric data is scarce in the field of psychology. Artificial Intelligence systems are able to work on contextual data and can have the ability to Learn. It is this ability that makes Artificial Intelligence systems the best option in aiding mental health diagnosis. It can be used as a tool to enhance and speed up the process of diagnosis with its ability to use historical data to make decisions and provide possible solutions. This paper gives an idea of how AI can be used to aid in diagnosis as well as treatment of mental health issues.