“I Believe That AI Will Recognize the Problem Before It Happens”: Qualitative Study Exploring Young Adults’ Perceptions of AI in Mental Health Care

Abstract Background Globally, young adults with mental health problems struggle to access appropriate and timely care, which may lead to a poorer future prognosis. Artificial intelligence (AI) is suggested to improve the quality of mental health care through increased capacities in diagnostics, monitoring, access, advanced decision-making, and digital consultations. Within mental health care, the design and application of AI solutions should elucidate the patient perspective on AI. Objective The aim was to explore the perceptions of AI in mental health care from the viewpoint of young adults with experience of seeking help for common mental health problems. Methods This was an interview study with 25 young adults aged between 18 and 30 years that applied a qualitative inductive design, with content analysis, to explore how AI-based technology can be used in mental health care. Results Three categories were derived from the analysis, representing the participants’ perceptions of how AI-based technology can be used in care for mental health problems. The first category entailed perceptions of AI-based technology as a digital companion, supporting individuals at difficult times, reminding and suggesting self-care activities, suggesting sources of information, and generally being receptive to changes in behavior or mood. The second category revolved around AI enabling more effective care and functioning as a tool, both for the patient and health care professionals (HCPs). Young adults expressed confidence in AI to improve triage, screening, identification, and diagnosis. The third category concerned risks and skepticism toward AI as a product developed by humans with limitations. Young adults voiced concerns about security and integrity, and about AI being autonomous, incapable of human empathy but with strong predictive capabilities. Conclusions Young adults recognize the potential of AI to serve as personalized support and its function as a digital guide and companion between mental health care consultations. It was believed that AI would function as a support in navigating the help-seeking process, ensuring that they avoid the “missing middle” service gap. They also voiced that AI will improve efficiency in health care, through monitoring, diagnostic accuracy, and reduction of the workload of HCPs, while simultaneously reducing the need for young adults to repeatedly tell their stories. Young adults express an ambivalence toward the use of AI in health care and voice risks of data integrity and bias. They consider AI to be more rational and objective than HCPs but do not want to forsake personal interaction with humans. Based on the results of this study and young adults’ perceptions of the monitoring capabilities of AI, future studies should define the boundaries regarding information collection responsibilities of the health care system versus the individuals’ responsibility for self-care.