Suicide rates in the U.S. have reached alarming levels, with 13.2 million adults experiencing serious suicidal thoughts annually, 3.8 million making a plan, and 1.6 million attempting suicide. These statistics reflect a public health emergency that demands urgent attention. Yet, access to quality mental health care remains limited, compounded by a nationwide shortage of providers, few of whom are equipped or willing to treat high-severity, high-acuity cases.
Mental health care is typically delivered in an episodic fashion, with patient assessments completed during regularly (or not, as the case may be) scheduled appointments. While valuable, this approach often fails to account for the rapid and unpredictable shifts in mental health that can occur between visits or just a lack of continuity in care. For individuals experiencing suicidal ideation, these gaps in care can be life-threatening. Real-time monitoring and timely intervention are crucial to addressing crises before they escalate. To effectively meet the challenges of treating higher acuity patients, we must transition toward proactive, technology-enabled care models designed to monitor and improve outcomes for those at risk.
Telehealth: Transforming Access and Equity in Mental Health Care
Telehealth offers one practical solution to this problem, breaking down barriers that have historically prevented access to mental health care. By enabling patients to receive care from the comfort and privacy of their homes, telehealth reduces both the stigma of a mental health visit and its logistical burdens, such as the time and cost associated with traveling to a clinic. For individuals in rural or underserved areas, telehealth has made high-quality mental health care accessible where it was previously unavailable.
Telehealth can do more than bridge geographic and socioeconomic divides; it can also leverage technology and data to deliver personalized, evidence-based care in innovative ways. Layering technology into telehealth platforms with, for example, the use of digital intakes, machine learning-based provisional diagnoses, and clinical decision support can aid clinicians in delivering tailored and effective treatment plans at the time of first symptoms.
Harnessing AI for Proactive and Personalized Suicide Prevention
Clinical decision support systems can be an integral part of a health technology solution and can aid in diagnostic accuracy, disease interpretation, and treatment selection. By analyzing a patient’s history, symptom cluster presentation, and treatment responses, a data science approach can help predict which therapies are most likely to be effective for each individual. This overcomes the guess-and-check process that often frustrates patients and prolongs the time to remission. A study published in BMC Psychiatry found that precision prescribing led to clinically significant improvement in 86% of patients within 12 weeks. Moreover, clinical decision support systems enabled providers to choose treatments that were both effective and well-tolerated: Clinicians delivered the right treatment the first time nearly 70% of the time, doubling the industry average.
In addition to treatment accuracy, AI holds the potential to help identify suicide risk factors early. Large language models can be deployed to analyze patient language in real-time, recognizing subtle warning signs that might otherwise go unnoticed in routine care. Serving appropriate alerts to clinicians can improve the time to intervention and potentially save lives.
Generative AI can work alongside structured data analysis by reviewing unstructured patient language, such as free text, to identify potential red flags, such as hopelessness or other risk factors of suicide. Research published in JMIR Mental Health showed that AI tools like OpenAI’s GPT-4 were able to identify and predict a mental health crisis (endorsement of suicidal ideation with a plan) with similar accuracy but higher sensitivity and lower specificity than senior trained psychiatrists and psychologists.
AI can also improve how clinicians track high-risk patients between appointments. Remote monitoring enables continuous risk assessment, ensuring that changes in a patient’s condition are flagged and addressed in a timely fashion.
Beyond clinical advancements, AI enhances the clinician-patient dynamic by alleviating administrative burdens. Automated tools for tasks like medical note generation, therapy transcript analysis, chart summaries, and quality assessments free up clinicians to spend more time on meaningful interactions with their patients. By improving efficiency, AI creates a more supportive and personalized care experience for both providers and patients.
The Path Forward: Collaboration and Innovation in Mental Health Care
The suicide crisis demands more than traditional approaches—it calls for innovation, collaboration, and the integration of technology to save lives. By leveraging telehealth and AI, we can create care models that are proactive, personalized, and accessible, addressing the urgent needs of individuals at risk—not only for those experiencing suicidal ideation but also underserved populations like those with substance use disorder, teenagers, and their caregivers, and Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries.
These tools not only enhance diagnostic accuracy and real-time intervention but also strengthen the clinician-patient relationship. As we continue to refine and expand these technologies, we have an opportunity to reimagine mental health care, ensuring that no one faces a crisis alone.
Mimi Winsberg, MD, is a Stanford-trained psychiatrist who brings over 30 years of clinical experience to her role at Brightside Health, which delivers life-saving mental health care to people with mild to severe clinical depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders, as well as substance use disorder. As Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder, she leads Brightside Health’s psychiatry and therapy clinical programs, with a focus on optimizing patient engagement and outcomes, and contributes to peer-reviewed research. Previously, Dr. Winsberg applied her clinical skills in leadership roles at Ginger and Lyra, as well as serving as the on-site psychiatrist at the Facebook Wellness Center. She holds a B.A. in Neuroscience from Harvard College; is on the leadership council of Brainstorm, the Stanford Laboratory for Brain Health Innovation and Entrepreneurship; is the author of the book Speaking In Thumbs (Doubleday, 2022); and regularly speaks at events across the country.
