Can Reinforcement Learning Help Fix the Mental Health Crisis?

Stefano Goria, Co-Founder and CTO of Thymia, discusses the company's mission to improve mental health assessments through a combination of video games based on neuropsychology, facial microexpression analysis, and speech pattern examination. Founded in 2020 amidst the growing global mental health crisis exacerbated by COVID-19, Thymia aims to provide clinicians with objective measures for diagnosing mental health issues. Goria brings his expertise in theoretical physics and machine learning from previous roles at Citi and J.P. Morgan to develop AI systems that underpin Thymia's end-to-end solution. The company focuses on addressing the subjectivity of mental health care by improving assessment quality, particularly for symptoms relevant to depression diagnosis. Thymia collects data from three main sources: video, speech, and behavioral patterns during gameplay. These diverse data types push AI models to their limits, requiring a combination of techniques such as deep neural nets, feature engineering, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning. The company also emphasizes ethical use of technology, informed data usage, and transparency in communication with patients.