Artificial intelligence and mental disorders: chicken-or-the egg issue

Abstract

Mental illnesses are common worldwide and have negative impact on many aspects of human life. Mental disorders are caused by a variety of genetic and environmental factors. Recently it has been shown that the psychological problems, including mental disorders, are closely related to the pervasive use of information and communication technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) in modern society. Although the successful integration of AI into human life dramatically improved the quality of life, leading to decreased stress in some aspects of human life, there is great potential, numerous risks and challenges regarding AI application in human life. While revolution in AI generally increases productivity, it may diminish some of today's valuable employment opportunities, which in turn, may cause distress and psychological problems in the society. On the one hand, due to negative outcomes of AI integration into human life, AI has been reported to cause distress and mental disorders in many societies, on the other hand, increased rate of psychological problems including mental disorders forced health professionals to increase the use of AI in the mental health care to help psychologists and psychiatrists to control and treat mental disorders, making this paradoxical issue as a chicken-or-the egg issue. This mini-review aims to present the association of AI with mental disorders in the trend of human life.