A psychologist has a session with a patient. There’s a listener present – not a “someone” but a something: advanced software. That’s A.I.-assisted software doing the “listening” – with the help of the core A.I. tool, NLP.

But such software does more than just listen.

Consider, for example, what every conscientious mental health practitioner knows: oral content produced in a therapeutic session must be turned into written formats, both for the purpose of cultivating successful clinical outcomes, and also for administrative purposes such as insurance reimbursement. Initially, then, A.I.-assisted software uses NLP to turn the spoken word into the written word, smoothly distinguishing between therapist and patient to create an accurate verbatim transcript of a session.

Moreover, enhanced by an LLM trained for use in the mental health context, such software can go a step further, distilling the written transcript into a succinct summary of the session. Such software can even provide voice analysis yielding insight into emotions.

Numerous aspects of the therapist/patient process are reliant upon review of written records: identifying psychological pathology or irregularity; gauging the practitioner’s level of empathy; reassuring the patient by demonstrating consistent in-depth familiarity with all preceding stages in the process; and interpreting results as they manifest over time. All these aspects benefit from the accuracy that flows out of content generated by A.I.-assisted software.

Human review and oversight of the output is of course still required – but such review and oversight will consistently reveal the value of bringing A.I. processing to behavioral healthcare.

The journey from the verbal interaction of a one-on-one or group session to the subsequent written session notes and corollary reports, diagnoses, and treatment plans is complex and time-consuming – or at least it was, before NLP and LLM altered the landscape. With A.I.-assisted software, the clinician benefits from time-saving efficiency and accuracy attendant to all administrative and analytical tasks, providing time for the most important element of mental health practice: understanding and addressing the needs of the patient.

Okay, but that still puts the focus on words. What else can A.I. do?