AI programme delivers exceptional care to anxiety patients
Around 1.2 million people are on the waiting list for mental health services, however they could now benefit from ieso Digital Health’s new programme that delivers care comparable to trained professionals.
Ieso Digital Health have teamed up with the NHS and NIHR BioResource to create a new AI-driven scheme that helps people struggling with generalised anxiety. The programme offers hope to one in five Americans with anxiety disorders and a scalable solution for the 301 million people living with anxiety disorders around the world.
Looking into the details, the new scheme is set to offer a six-module course facilitated by a conversational agent. It also draws on ways to manage anxiety symptoms based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) principles – a gold-standard treatment.
300 volunteers who had mild to severe anxiety were involved in the study. When it finished, 82% of participants who used the programme for up to nine weeks showed a clinically meaningful decrease in symptoms. Individuals who suffer with severe anxiety also showed signs of improvement and more than half of individuals involved experienced a reduction in symptoms within two weeks, on average.
‘The studies exciting results represent a major step forward on the journey to scalable mental health support to meet the growing global demand. We’ve seen one of the largest effects on anxiety reduction in any study, with benefits that persist for at least a month, and we were even able to help people with severe levels of anxiety. The results far exceeded our expectations for what could be achieved through combining this technology with human support,’ Dr Clare Palmer, Ph.D, director of evidence generation at ieso said.
Dr Alyssa Dietz, Ph.D, head of US clinical strategy at ieso, added: ‘As a clinician and digital mental health veteran, I feel confident these results will help move mental healthcare in the U.S. toward value-based care models. For consumers, a model like this provides near immediate access to high quality care. Importantly, it offers a discreet and personalized experience, one where access to skills backed by robust evidence is guaranteed. There are many reasons a flexible program is an ideal option: people from marginalized groups may prefer the increased privacy, shift-workers who need non-business hours access, or a busy parent where it can be really hard to find a fixed, regular time to care for yourself.’
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As well as experts praising the new project, we’ve heard from two women who used the scheme and have discussed their experience.
Kate, 49, a mum from the New Forest
‘There’s no therapy provision locally, and the waiting list even for telephone CBT is really, really long. I got the invitation via the GLAD study and I thought, you know, I will give this a go. It’s been absolutely great. The fact it was digital meant I could do it at a time that was convenient for me. When you’ve got a family and all the rest of it, you can’t always take the time to go and see someone in person.
‘So this is absolutely perfect. I found it really easy to type the responses, the chatbot was a great way of doing it and it meant I could do it at a time that was convenient to me. I’ve learned techniques that I can bring in for many situations.
‘And it’s really helped with almost being able to step away from myself and from all of those intense feelings, and to go, OK so this is what I’m feeling and it’s not always going to be like this. And I know that these are the practical things I can do. The practical steps I can take to make things better. And it was, it’s so well thought out and well put together.
‘It was great. Made you think about so many different aspects of life and mental health and what you want from life. I thought the emphasis on thinking about what you would like your life to be like was really helpful as well. It sort of puts it in a longer context than the six-week programme that you have. So yeah, if you’re like everybody else in the UK and it’s really hard to get to a therapist or make appointments or see anybody or even talk to anybody on the telephone, doing it digitally, it removes that fear of implicit judgement because you know it’s AI.
‘So there is no judgement, there’s not the biases built in, that we that we all have as humans. I found it a really positive experience and I would recommend it to anybody. Honestly, really would. And you know it’s a few months on from finishing the programme and I’m still in a really good place.’
Victoria, 43, based in East Yorkshire
‘I did it a couple of weeks before Christmas last year, and I saw it through to the end. I found it was really beneficial for me. I feel very lucky. It was really good to have some peace and quiet, and to do that [the programme], and to really feel like I was doing something productive for my own mental health. It was like somebody was giving me a leg up. It was somebody sort of picking me off the floor and saying, “you’ve got this, you can do this”. And it was was the support that I needed to then be able to get the momentum going, to get myself to a place where I was functioning better, where I was less anxious, and I had the headspace that I needed. And I am grateful for that. I think I didn’t expect it to be so effective. I do feel like the effects for me, it has been positive and it has lasted. My anxiety has dropped, and I have felt more able to do the things that I wanted to do.
‘What I really enjoyed was the animations. Those animations were a really useful way of illustrating the concepts that the app was trying to describe. And then obviously it helped you put it into practice. And at the end I watched them all again, because I thought they were really useful. I think having the in-person check-in was really useful as well. They were really well timed and it was nice to know that it wasn’t just a faceless online course. It’s nice to know that actually there are humans behind it, checking in with you, and if you do have any issues or any feedback, there was somebody there to give them. I think on a very fundamental level it made you feel safe. And it helped with the engagement as well. Knowing that somebody was going to have a chat to you about how you are. It did help motivate you through the course.’
Image: Alex Knight
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