Cited by 184Digital Mental Health InterventionsPsychotherapy Techniques and ApplicationsPsychiatric care and mental health services

Improving mental health services: a 50-year journey from randomized experiments to artificial intelligence and precision mental health

Open access
Bickman, Leonard·2020·Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research

Abstract

This conceptual paper describes the current state of mental health services, identifies critical problems, and suggests how to solve them. I focus on the potential contributions of artificial intelligence and precision mental health to improving mental health services. Toward that end, I draw upon my own research, which has changed over the last half century, to highlight the need to transform the way we conduct mental health services research. I identify exemplars from the emerging literature on artificial intelligence and precision approaches to treatment in which there is an attempt to personalize or fit the treatment to the client in order to produce more effective interventions.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1007/s10488-020-01065-8

Cites

350 of 351 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Even when young people receive established mental health interventions, their effectiveness is poor, with between a third and two-thirds of those receiving interventions not having symptom reductions.

    “their effectiveness is poor, with between a third and two-thirds of those receiving interventions not having symptom reductions. 237”

    From The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on youth mental health (2024) · cites this paper as [237]

    In “Services are Not Sufficiently Effective” (page unavailable), Bickman argues that even evidence-based services may be insufficiently effective and cites modest effects in studies involving young people. Our copy does not give the claimed estimate that one-third to two-thirds of young recipients have no symptom reduction; the percentages in “Services are Not Sufficiently Accessible” concern young people who receive no treatment, not outcomes among those treated. (LLM, conf=0.85)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • The rapid development and adoption of breakthrough technologies including artificial intelligence, natural language processing, virtual and augmented reality, and virtual worlds provides an unprecedented opportunity to use new innovations to address historical problems in youth mental health.

    “the rapid development and adoption of breakthrough technologies including artificial intelligence, natural language processing, virtual and augmented reality, and virtual worlds provides an unprecedented opportunity to use new innovations to address historical problems in youth mental health.”

    From The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on youth mental health (2024) · cites this paper as [237]

    The ‘Varieties of AI’ section discusses natural language processing and virtual and augmented reality, and the Conclusions describe AI’s potential for mental health services. But the paper does not establish rapid adoption of all the listed technologies or discuss virtual worlds as part of this opportunity. Its Abstract cautions that most AI research cited concerns adults, with little research on children and youth. (LLM, conf=0.87)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

2 of the 353 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 11

  1. Bickman L The Fort Bragg demonstration project: A managed continuum of care The Child, Youth, and Family Services Quarterly 1995 18 3 2 5
  2. Bickman, L., & Athay, M. I., (Eds.) (2012). Youth Mental Health Measurement (special issue) Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 39,1-2. ISSN: 0894-587X (Print) 1573-3289 (Online)
  3. Bickman L Rog D The evaluation handbook: An evaluator’s companion 2016 New York Guilford Press
  4. Institute of Medicine IOM Roundtable on evidence-based medicine: The learning healthcare system: Workshop summary 2007 Washington, DC National Academies Press 21452449
  5. King R Bickman L Is there a future for therapists? Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research 2017 44 5 595 597 10.1007/s10488-017-0814-1 28766031 · DOI
  6. Kohler, S. (2018). Precision medicine: Moving away from one-size-fits-all. Quest: Science for South Africa, 14(3). Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)). Available at https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11911/103
  7. Matheny M Israni ST Ahmed M Whicher D Artificial intelligence in health care: The hope, the hype, the promise, the peril. NAM Special Publication 2019 Washington, DC National Academy of Medicine 39146448
  8. Rajpurkar, P., Irvin, J., Zhu, K., Yang, B., Mehta, H., Duan, T., Ding, D., Bagul, A., Langlotz, C., Shpanskaya, K., Lungren, M. P., & Ng, A. Y. (2017). CheXNet: Radiologist-level pneumonia detection on chest X-rays with deep learning. arXiv:1711.05225 [cs.CV]. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.05225 · arXiv
  9. Tan J Rollins CPE Israel S Benrimoh D Primed for psychiatry: The role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the optimization of depression treatment University of Toronto Medical Journal 2019 96 1 43 47
  10. An understanding of AI’s limitations is starting to sink in. (2020). Technology Quarterly: Artificial Intelligence and Its Limits, The Economist.
  11. Vinge, V. (1993). How to survive in the post-human era. In Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace, Proceedings of the VISION-21 Symposium. NASA Conference Proceeding 10129. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19940022855.pdf

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Bickman, L.
Affiliations
Florida International University (US)
Corresponding author
Bickman, Leonard
Venue
Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research
Published
2020-07-26
Volume
47
Issue
5
Pages
795-843
ISSN
  • 0894-587X (ISSN-L)
  • 1573-3289
OpenAlex
W3045482196
Cited by
184
References
353
Citations by year
2026: 23 · 2025: 48 · 2024: 36 · 2023: 30 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 6
FWCI
17.40
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health
  • Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Digital Mental Health Interventions
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychiatric care and mental health services
Keywords
mental health services, artificial intelligence, precision mental health, personalized treatment, mental health services research, treatment effectiveness
MeSH terms
Artificial Intelligence, Health Services Research, Humans, Mental Health Services, Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic, Precision Medicine

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review