AI Makes Psychological Suffering Visible in Moving helan Health Insurance Film

Psychological pain is invisible to the eye and therefore often misunderstood. Until now. On October 10th, World Mental Health Day, helan health insurance launched a new campaign called 'See My Pain': giving people suffering from mental health issues the unprecedented chance to make their invisible pain visible through artificial intelligence. So that those around them can really see and understand how they feel.

Psychological pain: a very real problem

​You can’t tell if someone is suffering from depression, an anxiety disorder or any another mental illness just by looking at them. Mental pain is invisible, and that’s why it is still broadly misunderstood. Yet mental suffering is a real problem: in a Sciensano study, one in three Belgians said they 'don't feel well mentally'. Twenty per cent of participants refer to those feelings as 'depressed' and one in 10 Belgians suffers from an actual mental disorder.

AI: the emotionless technology now used to reveal the deepest emotions

​Thus came to life an initiative to visualise mental pain. Joined by a psychologist, people suffering from mental health issues describe what their pain feels like. These descriptions are inserted into the latest AI image generators, which compile a unique image based on this word for word input. The AI logarithms, unbiased and without any prior knowledge of the person or their psychological suffering, then create impartial and very haunting images of the participants' mental pain.

Remarkable, how an emotionless piece of technology is the solution to making people's deepest and most invisible feelings visible. The results were met with a lot of emotions, both from the participants themselves and friends and relatives. Finally, their loved ones can see and understand their daily pain and suffering.