Using AI for Mental Health Analysis and Prediction in School Surveys

Abstract Background Childhood and adolescence are critical stages of life for mental health and well-being. Schools are a key setting for mental health promotion and illness prevention. One in five children and adolescents have a mental disorder, about half of mental disorders beginning before the age of 14. Beneficial and explainable artificial intelligence can replace current paper-based and online approaches to school mental health surveys. This can enhance data acquisition, interoperability, data-driven analysis, trust and compliance. This paper presents a model for using chatbots for non-obtrusive data collection and supervised machine learning models for data analysis; and discusses ethical considerations pertaining to the use of these models. Methods For data acquisition, the proposed model uses chatbots which interact with students. The conversation log acts as the source of raw data for the machine learning. Pre-processing of the data is automated by filtering for keywords and phrases. Existing survey results, obtained through current paper-based data collection methods, are evaluated by domain experts (health professionals). These can be used to create a test dataset to validate the machine learning models. Supervised learning can then be deployed to classify specific behaviour and mental health patterns. Results We present a model that can be used to improve upon current paper-based data collection and manual data analysis methods. An open-source GitHub repository contains necessary tools and components of this model. Privacy is respected through rigorous observance of confidentiality and data protection requirements. Critical reflection on these ethics and law aspects is included in the project. Conclusions This model strengthens mental health surveillance in schools. The same tools and components could be applied to other public health data. Future extensions of this model could also incorporate unsupervised learning to find clusters and patterns of unknown effects. Key messages This model uses artificial intelligence to improve mental health surveillance and evaluation in school settings. Artificial intelligence can be applied more broadly in public health to harness the potential of predictive models.