Australian researchers have used artificial intelligence to analyse one million health-related Reddit posts, exploring whether AI could help identify mental health concerns and support earlier, more personalised care.

Victoria University Assoc. Prof. Khandakar Ahmed and researcher Saima Rani spent two years developing a mental health narrative database and testing two AI models, PaLM 2 and AutoML.

Researchers selected 800 Reddit posts for detailed expert classification, with psychiatrist and University of Melbourne Honorary Assoc. Prof. Dr Manjula O’Connor helping identify the underlying mental health root causes.

The AI models were then tested on 50 previously unseen posts and compared with human assessments.

PaLM 2 matched human judgement in 80 per cent of cases, compared with 68 per cent for AutoML.

The study found PaLM 2 was more likely to consider emotional tone and broader narrative context, while AutoML relied more heavily on specific words and phrases.

Researchers say the technology could eventually support mental health screening and triage, patient onboarding, digital mental health services and the analysis of large-scale public health trends.

“Mental health is deeply personal, and every person has a different story behind their struggles,” Associate Professor Ahmed said.

“We wanted to explore whether AI could look beyond the symptoms and recognise some of the deeper themes people describe in their own words.”

Dr O’Connor said the approach could potentially help identify population-level changes in mental health and assist public health planning.

The peer-reviewed study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, also found that both AI models and human reviewers struggled with ambiguous mental health categories.

Researchers stressed that the technology has limitations and said future studies should use larger evaluation datasets and a broader range of experts.

The researchers said the findings do not suggest AI should replace clinicians, but could help process large volumes of unstructured information and identify patterns that may warrant closer attention.

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