Ontology-Based Inference for Supporting Clinical Decisions in Mental Health

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental and behavioral disorders are increasingly common and currently affect on average 1/4 of the world’s population at some point in their lives, economically impacting communities and generating a high social cost that involves human and technological resources. Among these problems, in Brazil, the lack of a transparent, formal and standardized mental health information model stands out, thus hindering the generation of knowledge, which directly influences the quality of the mental healthcare services provided to the population. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a computational ontology to serve as a common knowledge base among those involved in this domain, to make inferences about treatments, symptoms, diagnosis and prevention methods, helping health professionals in clinical decisions. To do this, we initially carried out a literature review involving scientific papers and the most current WHO guidelines on mental health, later we transferred this knowledge to a formal computational model, building the proposed ontology. Also, the Hermit Reasoner inference engine was used to deduce facts and legitimize the consistency of the logic rules assigned to the model. Hence, it was possible to develop a semantic computational artifact for storage and generate knowledge to assist mental health professionals in clinical decisions.