Out with AI, in with the psychiatrist: a preference for human-derived clinical decision support in depression care

Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) are enabling the development of clinical support tools (CSTs) in psychiatry to facilitate the review of patient data and inform clinical care. To promote their successful integration and prevent over-reliance, it is important to understand how psychiatrists will respond to information provided by AI-based CSTs, particularly if it is incorrect. We conducted an experiment to examine psychiatrists’ perceptions of AI-based CSTs for treating major depressive disorder (MDD) and to determine whether perceptions interacted with the quality of CST information. Eighty-three psychiatrists read clinical notes about a hypothetical patient with MDD and reviewed two CSTs embedded within a single dashboard: the note’s summary and a treatment recommendation. Psychiatrists were randomised to believe the source of CSTs was either AI or another psychiatrist, and across four notes, CSTs provided either correct or incorrect information. Psychiatrists rated the CSTs on various attributes. Ratings for note summaries were less favourable when psychiatrists believed the notes were generated with AI as compared to another psychiatrist, regardless of whether the notes provided correct or incorrect information. A smaller preference for psychiatrist-generated information emerged in ratings of attributes that reflected the summary’s accuracy or its inclusion of important information from the full clinical note. Ratings for treatment recommendations were also less favourable when their perceived source was AI, but only when recommendations were correct. There was little evidence that clinical expertise or familiarity with AI impacted results. These findings suggest that psychiatrists prefer human-derived CSTs. This preference was less pronounced for ratings that may have prompted a deeper review of CST information (i.e. a comparison with the full clinical note to evaluate the summary’s accuracy or completeness, assessing an incorrect treatment recommendation), suggesting a role of heuristics. Future work should explore other contributing factors and downstream implications for integrating AI into psychiatric care.