Events

With the advent of digital approaches to mental health, modern artificial intelligence (AI) (machine learning in particular) is being used in the development of prediction, detection, and treatment solutions for mental health care. Although there has been considerable progress in digital health and the application of AI to physical health in general, the adoption of AI in mental health is relatively nascent. Opportunities are emerging however. In terms of treatment, AI can be incorporated into digital interventions, particularly web and smartphone apps, to enhance user experience and optimise personalised mental health care. In terms of prediction and detection, modern streams of abundant data, whether they be from medical imaging or an individual’s interactions with digital technologies, mean that data-driven AI methods can be employed to gain mental health insights.

This symposium, with a focus on AI in mental health, will provide an opportunity for researchers working at this intersection to share their work and meet other researchers working in this area. Submission topics of interest include:

• Digital phenotyping from personal digital devices and the Internet of Things
• Natural language processing of clinical texts and social media content
• Chatbots and other AI agents for mental health
• Expert systems for psychiatry
• Applications of AI to neuroimaging or brain imaging
• Ethics in the use of AI for mental health
• Human-Computer Interaction aspects of AI-driven mental health tools
• Clinical integration of AI solutions. Augmented psychiatry/psychology

With the support of the Barry family, the Criminology discipline within the School of Social and Political Sciences presents the 43rd John Barry Memorial Lecture.

While the calls for abolition grow louder in the aftermath of the renewed global Black Lives Matter movement, Chelsea Watego considers the complicity of criminology in state sanctioned violence in the colony.

In the wake of the 30^th anniversary of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody the silence of criminology was deafening. Yet, their presence in strengthening carceral responses to youth justice reforms, assaults against first responders, and coercive control in Queensland and beyond, has one questioning who the real criminals are. Criminology, Watego asserts, is part of the prison industrial complex, intellectualising the racial violence Blackfullas are subject to, and in its refusal to see the state itself as perpetrator. If abolition is to be realised in the colony, then criminology too must die.

About the John Barry Memorial Lecture

The Honourable Sir John Vincent William Barry, Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria from 1947, and Foundation Chairman of the Board of Studies in Criminology at the University of Melbourne from 1951, was a distinguished graduate of this University. Each year, the John Barry Memorial Lecture seeks to inform and educate on topics of criminological significance.