Digital technologies have long been explored as a complement to standard procedure in mental health research and practice, ranging from the management of electronic health records to app-based interventions. The recent emergence of large language models (LLMs), both proprietary and open-source ones, represents a major new opportunity on that front. Yet there is still a divide between the community developing LLMs and the one which may benefit from them, thus hindering the beneficial translation of the technology into clinical use. This divide largely stems from the lack of a common language and understanding regarding the technology's inner workings, capabilities, and risks. Our narrative review attempts to bridge this gap by providing intuitive explanations behind the basic concepts related to contemporary LLMs.
@article{arxiv.2411.11880,
title = {Large language models for mental health},
author = {Andreas Triantafyllopoulos and Yannik Terhorst and Iosif Tsangko and Florian B. Pokorny and Katrin D. Bartl-Pokorny and Lennart Seizer and Ayal Klein and Jenny Chim and Dana Atzil-Slonim and Maria Liakata and Markus Bühner and Johanna Löchner and Björn Schuller},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.11880},
year = {2024}
}