Clinical Questions and Psychological Change: How Can Artificial Intelligence Support Mental Health Practitioners?

Despite their diverse assumptions, clinical psychology approaches share the goal of mental health promotion. The literature highlights their usefulness, but also some issues related to their effectiveness, such as their difficulties in monitoring psychological change. The elective strategy for activ...

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Main Authors: Luisa Orrù, Marco Cuccarini, Christian Moro, Gian Piero Turchi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2024-12-01
Series:Behavioral Sciences
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/14/12/1225
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author Luisa Orrù
Marco Cuccarini
Christian Moro
Gian Piero Turchi
author_facet Luisa Orrù
Marco Cuccarini
Christian Moro
Gian Piero Turchi
author_sort Luisa Orrù
collection DOAJ
description Despite their diverse assumptions, clinical psychology approaches share the goal of mental health promotion. The literature highlights their usefulness, but also some issues related to their effectiveness, such as their difficulties in monitoring psychological change. The elective strategy for activating and managing psychological change is the clinical question. But how do different types of questions foster psychological change? This work tries to answer this issue by studying therapist–patient interactions with a ML model for text analysis. The goal was to investigate how psychological change occurs thanks to different types of questions, and to see if the ML model recognized this difference in analyzing patients’ answers to therapists’ clinical questions. The experimental dataset of 14,567 texts was divided based on two different question purposes, splitting answers in two categories: those elicited by questions asking patients to start describing their clinical situation, or those from asking them to detail how they evaluate their situation and mental health condition. The hypothesis that these categories are distinguishable by the model was confirmed by the results, which corroborate the different valences of the questions. These results foreshadow the possibility to train ML and AI models to suggest clinical questions to therapists based on patients’ answers, allowing the increase of clinicians’ knowledge, techniques, and skills.
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spelling doaj-art-cb7cbd4f0f8f4ad79dbf589af3d84b8a2025-08-20T02:55:49ZengMDPI AGBehavioral Sciences2076-328X2024-12-011412122510.3390/bs14121225Clinical Questions and Psychological Change: How Can Artificial Intelligence Support Mental Health Practitioners?Luisa Orrù0Marco Cuccarini1Christian Moro2Gian Piero Turchi3Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology, University of Padova, 35122 Padova, ItalyDepartment of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Perugia, 06123 Perugia, ItalyDepartment of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology, University of Padova, 35122 Padova, ItalyDepartment of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology, University of Padova, 35122 Padova, ItalyDespite their diverse assumptions, clinical psychology approaches share the goal of mental health promotion. The literature highlights their usefulness, but also some issues related to their effectiveness, such as their difficulties in monitoring psychological change. The elective strategy for activating and managing psychological change is the clinical question. But how do different types of questions foster psychological change? This work tries to answer this issue by studying therapist–patient interactions with a ML model for text analysis. The goal was to investigate how psychological change occurs thanks to different types of questions, and to see if the ML model recognized this difference in analyzing patients’ answers to therapists’ clinical questions. The experimental dataset of 14,567 texts was divided based on two different question purposes, splitting answers in two categories: those elicited by questions asking patients to start describing their clinical situation, or those from asking them to detail how they evaluate their situation and mental health condition. The hypothesis that these categories are distinguishable by the model was confirmed by the results, which corroborate the different valences of the questions. These results foreshadow the possibility to train ML and AI models to suggest clinical questions to therapists based on patients’ answers, allowing the increase of clinicians’ knowledge, techniques, and skills.https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/14/12/1225mental healthclinical questionsclinical psychologypsychological changemachine learningArtificial Intelligence
spellingShingle Luisa Orrù
Marco Cuccarini
Christian Moro
Gian Piero Turchi
Clinical Questions and Psychological Change: How Can Artificial Intelligence Support Mental Health Practitioners?
Behavioral Sciences
mental health
clinical questions
clinical psychology
psychological change
machine learning
Artificial Intelligence
title Clinical Questions and Psychological Change: How Can Artificial Intelligence Support Mental Health Practitioners?
title_full Clinical Questions and Psychological Change: How Can Artificial Intelligence Support Mental Health Practitioners?
title_fullStr Clinical Questions and Psychological Change: How Can Artificial Intelligence Support Mental Health Practitioners?
title_full_unstemmed Clinical Questions and Psychological Change: How Can Artificial Intelligence Support Mental Health Practitioners?
title_short Clinical Questions and Psychological Change: How Can Artificial Intelligence Support Mental Health Practitioners?
title_sort clinical questions and psychological change how can artificial intelligence support mental health practitioners
topic mental health
clinical questions
clinical psychology
psychological change
machine learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/14/12/1225
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AT gianpieroturchi clinicalquestionsandpsychologicalchangehowcanartificialintelligencesupportmentalhealthpractitioners