How I Use Harvard AI to Improve My Happiness and Psychological Health
Mental health has been at the forefront of our national conversation since long before the pandemic. However, the uncertainty and upheaval that has occurred since 2020 has made our health crisis all the more visible to the average American. This has caused many to turn to affordable and accessible solutions to support their mental health. In some cases, this includes the use of artificial intelligence.
Deep Longevity, a company focused on healthy aging and longevity, partnered with Harvard medical researcher Dr. Nancy Etcoff and her team to develop a free self-help application, FuturSelf, aimed at improving psychological health.
Dr. Etcoff remarked on the project, “I see this work as a momentous step forward in happiness research and in measuring and predicting future well-being.”
FuturSelf uses two models of human psychology to help users discover their “psychological age” and to offer suggested paths toward greater mental stability. As users provide ongoing data through their responses, the FuturSelf AI is able to autonomously improve its recommendations to better provide support.
“Now, we have the ability to break down such complicated concepts as “mental health” into manageable, and importantly, quantifiable pieces,” says Fёdor Galkin, Director of Scientific Business Development at Deep Longevity. “We are still not quite at the point where we can build a tool that could be applied to study both body and soul, but our FuturSelf platform is an important stepping stone.”
The company hopes to one day market the FuturSelf model to large businesses as a way to help their employees manage their mental health, increase motivation, and seek additional support when needed.
After hearing how the team’s system has been applied to a functional tool for mental health, I was eager to give FuturSelf a try for myself.
Before getting started, the website required me to create a log in. It had me check off a series of demographic choices, including age and gender. It also asked for my name or nickname, which doesn’t need to be your real name.
The program then asks a series of questions, similar to any psychological assessment, with users rating statements on degrees of agreement or disagreement. Taking just a few minutes, the questions cover topics like satisfaction with career, strength of interpersonal relationships, etc.
When you are finished, the program calculates your results and responds with your psychological age. This places you on a typical developmental timeline where values change with age.
Younger psychological age is linked to increased drive in career and personal development. Older psychological ages reflect stronger interpersonal relationships but dissatisfaction with one’s purpose in life. The program also predicts how your psychological age and personal satisfaction will change in coming years, further clarifying the changes we undergo as we age.
Despite being in my 40’s, I was revealed to have a psychological age of 35. I think this is linked to a number of factors in my life: these include my continued professional drive and desire for self-improvement, coming to my current career later in life, and maintaining a limited number of ongoing long-term relationships.
I found the insights provided by this data to be valuable. Some of it didn’t come as a surprise as self-awareness grows with age, but knowing how these areas were interconnected made my own tendencies in life clearer.
The second part of the application is the follow-up to the assessment. This is the functional aspect of what FuturSelf is offering. The platform maps you across six categories: self-acceptance, autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, purpose in life, and positive relationships with others.
FuturSelf gives you a percentage score to help you to identify places in life where you may struggle. This is to increase your understanding of the pain points that might be getting in the way of your happiness. It also gives you a predicted score for where you will be in five years in each category. I was disheartened to see that some of my scores were predicted to go down in five years. For example, my self-acceptance is anticipated to drop by six points.
Want to improve your future score? The platform offers a checklist of exercises you can undertake to enhance your mental health and boost happiness. For example, under Self-Acceptance, it suggests replacing negative thoughts, describing yourself positively in writing, and becoming a friend to yourself. For environmental mastery, the exercises include making a list of barriers preventing your success and brainstorming the resources you need to overcome them.
After completing enough of the self-improvement exercises, you are directed to retake the assessment test to measure your progress. Based on your responses, new prompts are provided for further personal growth.
I can see how FuturSelf is capable of becoming a lifelong self-help tool for mental well-being. Many of the exercises are similar to what you would encounter when working with a live mental health specialist, but FuturSelf is available on your schedule for mental health support tailored to you.
Ready to get started on your own Mind Journey? Joining FuturSelf is free. You can access the platform at futurself.ai