Event Description

Applications of algorithmic and data-driven technologies in mental health care settings are rapidly expanding. While well-designed digital technologies may be used to promote effective mental health and crisis support, they raise thorny ethical issues. Moreover, the potential for a range of “data harms” is enormous, including algorithmic hiring programs that discriminate against people with histories of mental health treatment, weaponization of mental health data by criminal justice and border agencies, and invasive biometric monitoring and surveillance regimes that dehumanize care. At the same time, the legal and policy frameworks that regulate the use of these technologies in mental health contexts have been underinclusive of the perspectives of people with lived experience of profound psychological distress, mental health conditions, psychosocial disabilities, and other stakeholders.

This timely event co-sponsored by HPOD, The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics (PFC), and GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard explored this critical intersection through the lens of the pathbreaking 2022 report, Digital Futures in Mind: Reflecting on Technological Experiments in Mental Health and Crisis Support. The report’s authors made plain the high stakes of the growth of artificial intelligence in mental health through case studies that lay bare the real-world implications on individuals harmed by these technologies. Co-authors of the report, Lydia X.Z. Brown and Piers Gooding, presented some of their most salient findings regarding the potential for data harms, while also setting forth principles for promoting accountability as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly entrenched in mental health systems. Thereafter, experts in artificial intelligence in medicine and mental health care and research discussed the implications of the report’s findings for the mental health care providers, users, and their allies.  

CART live captioning was provided.

Welcome

• Professor Michael Ashley Stein, Executive Director, HPOD

Presenters

• Piers Gooding, Senior Research Fellow, Melbourne Law School
• Lydia X.Z. Brown, Adjunct Lecturer, Georgetown University, Disability Studies Program

Discussants

• Carlos Larrauri, Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner & Member of the Board of Directors, National Alliance on Mental Illness
• Rhonda Moore, National Institutes of Health
• Sara Gerke, Assistant Professor of Law, Penn State Dickinson Law, leadership team member of PFC’s Project on Precision Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, and the Law (PMAIL)

Q&A

Closing Remarks

• Professor Michael Ashley Stein, Executive Director, HPOD

Co-sponsored by HPOD, The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics (PFC), and GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard.