AI, NLP and digital medicine

Validating and critically discussing AI, NLP and digital tools in psychiatry is my main research focus. I currently work on examining ethical and regulatory implications of developments in digital medicine and the longitudinal validation of AI-based speech analysis in psychosis and across multiple languages. I am also more broadly interested in the use of digital technology for improving the treatment of people with serious mental illness, e.g. through virtual reality applications.

Publications on NLP and digital medicine:

  • Just, S.A., Pandey, S., Stein, D. Nenchev, I., Bröcker, A.-L., Montag, C., & Morgan, S.E. (2026). Changes in speech reflect changes in psychotic symptom severity: a longitudinal natural language processing analysis. Translational Psychiatry. doi: 10.1038/s41398-026-04389-5

  • Just, S.A. & Elvevåg, B. (2026). How digital medicine redefines the landscape of care: Ethical and legal consequences in the case of psychiatry. DIGITAL HEALTH, 12. doi: 10.1177/20552076261478845

  • Stein, D., Bobrovskiy, D., Stede, M., Montag, C., & Just, S.A. (2026). Cross-linguistic benchmarking of NLP metrics for psychosis research. npj Digital Medicine,9, 594. doi: 10.1038/s41746-026-03053-y

  • Ghelfi, L., Healy, J., Piacenza, F., French, I., McNamara, N., Rabbi, K.A., Bond, B., O'Hora, E., Roddy, D., Kamali, M., Das, S., Just, S.A., Tedeschi, E., Hussain, M., Mikalsen, K.Ø., Kaiser, S., Cecere, G., Koops, S., de Boer, J., Nguyen, E., Bora, E., Hinzen, W., Homan, P., Sommer, I.E., Cotter, D., Cannon, M. & Lyne, J.P. (2026). Using AI to detect psychosis relapse: scoping review. JMIR Mental Health, 13:e92192. doi: 10.2196/92192

  • Just, S.A., Jung, E., Sarpeah, R., Brecht, A., Stötzner, P. & Nenchev, I. (2026). What shapes basic digital competence in people with mental illness beyond internet usage: the influence of experience, illness severity and self-efficacy. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 23. doi: 10.1016/j.chbr.2026.101155

  • Just, S.A., Tedeschi, E., Holsbø, E. Mikalsen, K. Ø., Bongo, L. A., Homan, P. & Elvevåg, B. (2026). The challenges of implementing hybrid baselines for the interpretation of longitudinal behavioral data from individuals. npj Digital Medicine,9, 331. doi: 10.1038/s41746-026-02668-5

  • Just, S. A., DeLuca, V., Rothman, J., & Elvevåg, B. (2026). Rethinking language, cognition and assessment in psychosis: How bilingualism challenges psychiatry and how natural language processing can help. Schizophrenia. doi: 10.1038/s41537-026-00742-1

  • Seethaler, M., Güntner, L., Lütt, A., & Just, S. A. (2026). Managing emotional distress in older adults with mental illness: a randomized controlled trial evaluating virtual reality relaxation. Translational Psychiatry, 16(1). doi: 10.1038/s41398-026-03955-1

  • Just, S. A., Elvevåg, B., Pandey, S., Nenchev, I., Bröcker, A.-L., Montag, C., & Morgan, S. E. (2025). Moving beyond word error rate to evaluate automatic speech recognition in clinical samples: Lessons from research into schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Psychiatry Research, 352. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2025.116690

  • Hüppi, R. M., Bautista, L., Cecere, G., Just, S. A., … & Homan, P. (2025). TRUSTING: An international multicenter observational study of speech-based relapse prediction in psychosis using explainable AI. medRxiv 2025.11.14.25339774. doi: 10.1101/2025.11.14.25339774

  • Nenchev, I., Montag, C., & Just, S. A. (2025). Reverse Prompting: A Novel Computational Paradigm in Schizophrenia Based on Large Language Models. Peer-reviewed conference paper, Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing 2025. https://acl-bg.org/proceedings/2025/RANLP%202025/pdf/2025.ranlp-1.92.pdf

  • Nenchev, I., Scheffler, T., … Just, S. A. & Montag, C. (2024). Linguistic markers of schizophrenia: a case study of Robert Walser. Peer-reviewed conference paper and poster, Proceedings of the 9th Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology (CLPsych 2024), Malta, 41–60. https://aclanthology.org/2024.clpsych-1.4‍ ‍

  • Just, S. A. & Lütt, A., Siegle, P., Döring-Brandl, E. J. (2024). Feasibility of using virtual reality in geriatric psychiatry. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. e6060. doi: 10.1002/gps.6060

  • Just, S. A. & Bröcker, A-L., Ryazanskaya, G., Nenchev, I., Schneider, M., Bermpohl, F., Heinz, A. & Montag, C. (2023). Validation of natural language processing methods capturing semantic incoherence in the speech of patients with non-affective psychosis. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1208856

  • Just, S. A., Haegert, E., Kořánová, N., Bröcker, A-L., Nenchev, I., Funcke, J., Heinz, A., Bermpohl, F., Stede, M. & Montag, C. (2020). Modeling incoherent discourse in non-affective psychosis. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11, 846. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00846

  • Just, S. A., Haegert, E., Kořánová, N., Bröcker, A.-L., Nenchev, I., Funcke, J., Montag, C., & Stede, M. (2019). Coherence models in schizophrenia. Peer-reviewed conference paper and poster, NAACL Conference, The Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology, Minneapolis. doi: 10.18653/v1/W19-3015