"According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S. They affect 40 million adults, or 18.1% of the population, every year. Furthermore, anxiety disorders affect 25.1% of children between 13 and 18 years old, putting them at a much higher risk to perform poorly in school, engage in substance abuse, and miss out on important social experiences. Even though this disorder is highly treatable, only 36.9% of those suffering receive treatment, most likely due to a perceived societal stigma, with men far less likely to seek treatment." One of the best decisions I made in my life was deciding to see a mental health professional in my senior year of college. It was a stressful time and a moment of big transition in my life.

"According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S. They affect 40 million adults, or 18.1% of the population, every year. Furthermore, anxiety disorders affect 25.1% of children between 13 and 18 years old, putting them at a much higher risk to perform poorly in school, engage in substance abuse, and miss out on important social experiences. Even though this disorder is highly treatable, only 36.9% of those suffering receive treatment, most likely due to a perceived societal stigma, with men far less likely to seek treatment." One of the best decisions I made in my life was deciding to see a mental health professional in my senior year of college. It was a stressful time and a moment of big transition in my life.

Neuroscientists and clinicians around the world are using machine learning to develop treatment plans for patients and to identify some of the key markers for mental health disorders before they may set in. One of the benefits is that machine learning helps clinicians predict who may be at risk of a particular disorder. "Machine learning really meets a specific need that we have in psychiatry -- and that's the need for personalization," he says. "For decades, we've been working on group averages and statistics that apply to populations who may have the same diagnosis but don't translate as well to an individual patient. Machine learning allows us to get at individual predictions in a way we haven't been able to before.", says David Benrimoh, MD, CM, a psychiatry resident at McGill University.