New approach can help detect and predict mental health symptoms in teens

The majority of mental health disorders manifest during adolescence and relate to a multiplex interplay of neurobiological and environmental factors. Instead of considering these factors in isolation, a newly developed manifold learning technique can model brain-environmental interactions, which vastly improves detection of existing mental health symptoms and prediction of future ones compared to current methods. The study underscores the importance of considering the adolescent brain in conjunction with the environment in which it develops.