Promoting adolescent mental health with artificial intelligence and mobile technology-based psychological interventions
Main funder
Funder's project number: 324638
Funds granted by main funder (€)
- 480 000,00
Funding program
Project timetable
Project start date: 01/09/2019
Project end date: 31/08/2023
Summary
How can we effectively promote adolescents’ mental health? Despite the serious consequences of adolescent mental health problems, services tailored for adolescents are scarce. The fact that mental health and related problems tend to co-occur, calls for a universal psychological treatment, such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). For adolescents, who spend more time on the web than other age groups, technology and mobile devices offer a flexible and powerful tool and provide new opportunities to enhance the delivery of mental health services. The present proposal suggests a new electronic and individually tailored psychological intervention iACT to promote adolescents’ mental health and successful educational transitions. This proposal will a) apply artificial intelligence (AI) to obtain novel understanding of what kind of adolescents benefit from technology-based psychological interventions (iACT) and subsequently tailor iACT to adolescents’ individual needs, b) carry out randomized control trial (n=240) to investigate effectiveness of individually tailored iACT including comparing efficacy of iACT with iCoach providing automated personal support and iACT with both iCoach and HumanCoach providing personal support and c) investigate whether the effectiveness of the individually tailored iACT varies according to different individual and contextual factors. Scientific breakthroughs are expected by answering “burning questions”:
(1) How to effectively recognize adolescents who benefit or who do not benefit technology-based psychological interventions? (2) How to individually tailor technologically-based interventions to adolescents’ individual needs to provide personalized automated support that is beneficial for each type of adolescents? (3) Is only AI approach (iCoach) combined with another high-technology solution (iACT) enough to support adolescents’ mental health or is human intelligence needed in addition to artificial intelligence (iCoach+human Coach) in effort to solve large health and well-being problems in society? The results have high potential to provide a novel and effective way to provide individualized support for a large group of adolescents, as well as to develop theory and practice of psychotherapy towards a unified therapeutic model that is effective for all the mental health problems instead of a need to develop
separate treatment models for different problems.
(1) How to effectively recognize adolescents who benefit or who do not benefit technology-based psychological interventions? (2) How to individually tailor technologically-based interventions to adolescents’ individual needs to provide personalized automated support that is beneficial for each type of adolescents? (3) Is only AI approach (iCoach) combined with another high-technology solution (iACT) enough to support adolescents’ mental health or is human intelligence needed in addition to artificial intelligence (iCoach+human Coach) in effort to solve large health and well-being problems in society? The results have high potential to provide a novel and effective way to provide individualized support for a large group of adolescents, as well as to develop theory and practice of psychotherapy towards a unified therapeutic model that is effective for all the mental health problems instead of a need to develop
separate treatment models for different problems.
Principal Investigator
Primary responsible unit
Follow-up groups
Profiling area: Multidisciplinary research on learning and teaching (University of Jyväskylä JYU) MultiLeTe
Related publications and other outputs
1 of 2
- Brief online ACT intervention to improve adolescents’ well-being : Effectiveness among adolescents with depressive symptoms during COVID-19 (2024) Keinonen, K.; et al.; A1; OA
- Factors Anticipating Adolescents’ Adherence and Dropout in an Online ACT Intervention During the COVID-19 Pandemic (2024) Puolakanaho, Anne; et al.; A1; OA
- A guided online ACT intervention may increase psychological well-being and support school engagement in adolescents (2023) Hämäläinen, Tetta; et al.; A1; OA
- Developing A Conversational Interface for an ACT-based Online Program : Understanding Adolescents’ Expectations of Conversational Style (2023) Peltola, Johanna; et al.; A4; OA
- Dropout intentions in secondary education : Student temperament and achievement motivation as antecedents (2023) Anttila, Satu; et al.; A1; OA
- In the shadow of COVID-19 : A randomized controlled online ACT trial promoting adolescent psychological flexibility and self-compassion (2023) Lappalainen, Päivi; et al.; A1; OA
- Temperament and symptoms of stress and depression among adolescents : The mediating role of psychological flexibility (2023) Puolakanaho, Anne; et al.; A1; OA
- The role of psychological flexibility and socioeconomic status in adolescent identity development (2023) Kukkola, Aliisa; et al.; A1; OA
- The Roles of Adherence and Usage Activity in Adolescents' Intervention Gains During Brief Guided Online Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (2023) Hämäläinen, Tetta; et al.; A1; OA
- The role of psychological inflexibility in adolescent satisfaction with the educational track and school dropout intentions (2022) Liinamaa, Sara; et al.; A1; OA
