Insider Brief
- Google has launched two AI-driven initiatives to improve global mental health care, including a new field guide for organizations and a research program targeting anxiety, depression, and psychosis, backed by the Wellcome Trust.
- The field guide, developed with Grand Challenges Canada and the McKinsey Health Institute, outlines how AI can support clinician training, personalize support, and streamline workflows to help scale evidence-based interventions.
- A separate multi-year research effort, led by Google for Health and DeepMind with funding from the Wellcome Trust, will explore more objective tools and therapies for mental health conditions, reflecting a broader push to make care more accessible in underserved regions.
Google has announced two initiatives employing artificial intelligence to improve mental health care, including a new field guide and a multi-year research effort for treating anxiety, depression and psychosis.
According to Google, dual approach aims to address a global mental health crisis, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where billions face untreated conditions such as depression, anxiety, and psychosis. The first initiative in partnership with Grand Challenges Canada and the McKinsey Health Institute, is a practical field guide for mental health organizations, providing examples and principles for applying AI responsibly to mental health care. Designed to help clinicians and organizations scale evidence-based interventions, the guide outlines how AI can support clinician training, personalize care, streamline data workflows, and improve treatment access.
The second initiative is a research collaboration among Google for Health, Google DeepMind, and the Wellcome Trust. The effort will fund projects that explore how AI can offer more objective and personalized tools to measure and treat complex mental health disorders. Researchers will investigate new ways to quantify symptoms, track individual responses to treatment, and potentially develop novel therapies, including new medications.
The Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s largest biomedical research charities, is providing core funding for the research program. Google DeepMind and Google for Health are contributing AI capabilities, including large language models and other machine learning tools. The initiative reflects growing interest among global health funders in AI-enabled approaches to personalize and scale mental health care, Google indicated.
Together, the two programs aim to speed the adoption of digital mental health tools while laying the groundwork for longer-term innovations in diagnostics and therapy. By focusing both on near-term implementation and longer-horizon research, the company said it hopes these efforts could make mental health support more effective and accessible for underserved populations worldwide.
