Machine Learning and Non-Affective Psychosis: Identification, Differential Diagnosis, and Treatment

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review will cover the most relevant findings on the use of machine learning (ML) techniques in the field of non-affective psychosis, by summarizing the studies published in the last three years focusing on illness detection and treatment. RECENT FINDINGS: Multiple ML tools that include mostly supervised approaches such as support vector machine, gradient boosting, and random forest showed promising results by applying these algorithms to various sources of data: socio-demographic information, EEG, language, digital content, blood biomarkers, neuroimaging, and electronic health records. However, the overall performance, in the binary classification case, varied from 0.49, which is to be considered very low (i.e., noise), to over 0.90. These results are fully justified by different factors, some of which may be attributable to the preprocessing of the data, the wide variety of the data, and the a-priori setting of hyperparameters. One of the main limitations of the field is the lack of stratification of results based on biological sex, given that psychosis presents differently in men and women; hence, the necessity to tailor identification tools and data analytic strategies. SUMMARY: Timely identification and appropriate treatment are key factors in reducing the consequences of psychotic disorders. In recent years, the emergence of new analytical tools based on artificial intelligence such as supervised ML approaches showed promises as a potential breakthrough in this field. However, ML applications in everyday practice are still in its infancy.