Navigate back to menu ECP Special
Presidential Address Telmo Mourinho Baptista
“Say ‘Present’ in every field: the future of psychology and psychology organizations”
Baptista states that mental disorders are by far the largest contributor to chronic conditions afflicting the population of Europe. 35 to 50% of the people with mental diseases do not receive mental health treatment. And one in every four European citizens are at risk of having a mental disease.
Sustainable Development Goals are important to be set in order to improve the mental health of the citizens by 2030. With a push from the UN Secretary General António Guterres, policy makers need to hurry with only 11 years to meet the goals related to mental health. Baptista shows that Artificial Intelligence (AI) could provide solutions to help with mental health treatments.
The combination of engineers and scientists should be pursued in the technology area that we are currently living in. With robots and Virtual Reality we can help a great amount of mental health sufferers easily, but that doesn’t mean that professionals are vitally important. Develop interventions to impact for families, groups, organizations, communities and large interest groups through internet based solutions. Interventions can be done in the digital world, the future is now.
However, with AI we should be lawful, ethical and above all, we should be beware of potential harm. Align our strategy with political agenda of countries, don’t forget the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 and improve the accessibility of mental health treatment.
