Machine Learning Applications in Studying Mental Health Among Immigrants and Racial and Ethnic Minorities: An Exploratory Review

Abstract

Background The use of machine learning (ML) in mental health (MH) research is increasing, especially as new, more complex data types become available to analyze. By examining the published literature, this review aims to explore potential gaps in the current use of ML to study MH in vulnerable populations of immigrants, refugees, migrants, and racial and ethnic minorities. Methods From October 2022 to June 2023, Google Scholar, EMBASE and PubMed were queried. ML-related terms, MH-related terms, and population-of-focus search terms were strung together with Boolean operators. Backward reference searching was also conducted. Included peer-reviewed studies reported using a method or application of ML in an MH context and focused on the populations of interest. We did not have date cutoffs. Publications were excluded if they were narrative or did not exclusively focus on a minority population from the respective country. Data including study context, the focus of mental healthcare, sample, data type, type of ML algorithm used, and algorithm performance was extracted from each. Results Ultimately, 13 peer-reviewed publications were included. All the articles were published within the last 6 years, and over half of them studied populations within the US. Most reviewed studies used supervised learning to explain or predict MH outcomes. Some publications used up to 16 models to determine the best predictive power. Almost half of the included publications did not discuss their cross-validation method. Conclusions The included studies provide proof-of-concept for the potential use of ML algorithms to address MH concerns in these special populations, few as they may be. Our review finds that the clinical application of these models for classifying and predicting MH disorders is still under development.