For the past year, information systems (IS) students from the BYU Marriott School of Business have been researching how artificial intelligence (AI) can help increase access to mental health care. For the students, this research project has been more than learning about AI and mental health: It’s been an opportunity to explore what they’re capable of.
“When you find that initial research question that interests you, it’s captivating, and you’re able to take that curiosity as far as it’ll go,” says Nathan Blatter, a MISM student from Danville, California. Blatter got started in the project as an undergraduate student while working as a research assistant for IS professor James Gaskin, who was interested in studying ways to help people access mental health care.
Gaskin and Blatter agreed that there were challenges in the therapy system—such as availability, cost, and, at times, a language barrier—that could be aided by using AI as a supplementary resource to therapy. At the same time, they recognized that chatbots can exhibit dangerous behavior when addressing mental health challenges, such as validating harmful behaviors.
So Blatter got to work developing an AI agent with enough safety guardrails to serve two purposes: acting as a reliable aid for patients when they can’t see a human therapist and helping professionals with administrative tasks. “I would love for our project to be used by therapists to take a load off them and amplify their ability to focus on what’s important,” Gaskin says.
As the project’s scope expanded, Blatter and Gaskin joined with a team of MISM students who used the research as their capstone project. One of those students was Madison Hutchings, who explains that working with students who had different strengths and perspectives gave the team the opportunity to learn from one another.
But incorporating the MISM students into the project presented a challenge: The students’ graduation date accelerated the deadline by which the team’s research method needed to be approved by the Institutional Review Board. Hutchings says that although the project took her out of her comfort zone, it became a growth opportunity. “I wouldn’t be where I am if I didn’t stretch myself the same way,” she says.
Taking on the challenge, Hutchings adds, also taught her the importance of including God in the process. “I’m so grateful for Jesus Christ—the Master Researcher, the one that knows what our brothers and sisters need and how we can be His hands,” she says. “I feel that God cares about anything we’re working on that’s good and trying to help others in some way.”
Less than a week before the MISM students graduated, the team drafted a research paper with their findings and traveled to Ohio to present it at the Big XII+ MIS Research Symposium. For recent MISM graduate Ben Zapata, it was what he hopes to be the first of many academic conferences. “Being surrounded by other people who are also working on research and trying to move the field forward reinforced my desire to eventually get back into research,” he says.
As for Hutchings, she says she’s excited to see how she can continue to use research to benefit others as she now works with first-year business students at Utah State University as a project manager. “I feel like this project will help me know how I can help others transform the world in a better way.”