The Public Health Ministry will apply artificial intelligence (AI) to its online platform to help with diagnosing depression in patients, Dr Opas Karnkawinpong, the permanent secretary for public health, said on Wednesday.
The AI system, known as the Detection and Monitoring Intelligence Network for Depression (DMIND), was developed in collaboration with the Department of Mental Health (DMH) and the Faculty of Engineering at Chulalongkorn University.
Dr Opas said the AI system was developed to help psychiatrists and therapists with basic screening for depression. The system was designed to be accessible and easy to use, but effective. DMIND is linked with Mor Phrom's account on Line Messenger. Users can talk with a therapist using the account's chatbot function or ask personalised questions for depression screening using the Mental Health Checkup function.
The system also includes voice and facial expression detectors, which helps with categorising users into four colour codes. After using the function, users who are assigned a yellow code are expected to receive a callback from a therapist within seven days; those in the red code category will receive a callback within a day.
Dr Pongkasem Kaimuk, DMH director, added the application was developed to respond to users' demand for more AI therapists to help with basic therapy. More functions, such as user journey tracking and assistance for those with critical depression symptoms, are expected to be added in the future, added Dr Pongkasem.
According to DMH, at least 2.4 million patients received mental health therapy in 2022, compared to the 1.3 million reported in 2015. The suicide rate also rose from 7.26 per 100,000 people to 7.94 per 100,000 people, with the majority of people committing suicide being of working age (20–59 years old).
The report relates to information provided by the Centre of Excellence in Digital and AI for Mental Health (AIMET), which estimates that at least 2,200 of 100,000 teenagers over 15 years old have depression.