Writing

Academic

I am a psychiatry researcher and data engineer living in Malden, MA. My current research focus is on the intersection of mental health and AI. Currently working on projects in LLM psychosis, LLM benchmarking, and responsible AI mental health tool development.

Journal Articles

AI depictions of psychiatric diagnoses: a preliminary study of generative image outputs in Midjourney V.6 and DALL-E 3

Matthew Flathers, Griffin Smith, Ellen Wagner, Carl Erik Fisher, John Torous

BMJ Mental Health

27(1):e301298 doi: 10.1136/bmjment-2024-301298 PMID: 39632121

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Beyond AI psychosis: a functional typology of large language model-associated psychotic phenomena

Matthew Flathers, Spencer Roux, John Torous

Lancet Digital Health

doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landig.2025.100974

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Mindbench.ai: an actionable platform to evaluate the profile and performance of large language models in a mental healthcare context

Matthew Flathers, Bridget Dwyer, Akane Sano, Allison Dempsey, Andrea Cipriani, Asim H. Gazi, Bryce Hill, Carla Gorban, Carolyn I. Rodriguez, Charles Stromeyer IV, Darlene King, Eden Rozenblit, Gillian Strudwick, Jake Linardon, Jiaee Cheong, Joseph Firth, Julian Herpertz, Julian Schwarz, Khai Truong, Margaret Emerson, Martin P. Paulus, Michelle Patriquin, Yining Hua, Soumya Choudhary, Steven Siddals, Laura Ospina Pinillos, Jason Bantjes, Steven Scheuller, Xuhai Xu, Ken Duckworth, Daniel H. Gillison, Michael Wood, John Torous

NPP – Digital Psychiatry and Neuroscience

doi: 10.1038/s44277-025-00049-6

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Contextualizing Clinical Benchmarks: A Tripartite Approach to Evaluating LLM-Based Tools in Mental Health Settings

Matthew Flathers, Bridget Dwyer, Eden Rozenblit, John Torous

Journal of Psychiatric Practice

31(6):p 294-301 doi: 10.1097/PRA.0000000000000892

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Governing AI in Mental Health: 50-State Legislative Review

J Nicholas Shumate, Eden Rozenblit, Matthew Flathers, Carlos A Larrauri, Christine Hau, Winna Xia, E Nicholas Torous, John Torous

JMIR Mental Health

12:e80739 doi: 10.2196/80739 PMID: 41172342

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Charting the evolution of artificial intelligence mental health chatbots from rule-based systems to large language models: a systematic review

Yining Hua, Steve Siddals, Zilin Ma, Isaac Galatzer-Levy, Winna Xia, Christine Hau, Hongbin Na, Matthew Flathers, Jake Linardon, Cyrus Ayubcha, John Torous

World Psychiatry

24(3) doi: 10.1002/wps.21352 PMID: 40948070

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Interpreting psychiatric digital phenotyping data with large language models: a preliminary analysis

Matthew Flathers, Winna Xia, Christine Hau, Benjamin W. Nelson, Jiaee Cheong, James Burns, John Torous

BMJ Mental Health

28(1):e301817 doi: 10.1136/bmjment-2025-301817 PMID: 40992790

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Evaluating the performance of general purpose large language models in identifying human facial emotions

Benjamin W. Nelson, Ari Winbush, Steven Siddals, Matthew Flathers, Nicholas B. Allen, John Torous

npj Digital Medicine

8(615) doi: 10.1038/s41746-025-01985-5

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Social Media Detox and Youth Mental Health

Elombe Calvert, Maddalena Cipriani, Bridget Dwyer, Victoria Lisowski, Jane Mikkelson, Kelly Chen, Matthew Flathers, Christine Hau, Winna Xia, Juan Castillo, Alex Dhima, Sean Ryan, John Torous

JAMA Network Open

8(11) doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.45245

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Transforming Digital Phenotyping Raw Data Into Actionable Biomarkers, Quality Metrics, and Data Visualizations Using Cortex Software Package: Tutorial

James Burns, Kelly Chen, Matthew Flathers, Danielle Currey, Natalia Macrynikola, Aditya Vaidyam, Carsten Langholm, Ian Barnett, Andrew (Jin Soon) Byun, Erlend Lane, John Torous

JMIR

26:e58502 doi: 10.2196/58502 PMID: 39178032

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Towards clinical subtypes in schizophrenia: integrating cognitive, functional, and digital phenotyping assessments

Andrew (Jin Soo) Byun, Erlend Lane, Carsten Langholm, Matthew Flathers, Mei-Hua Hall, John Torous

Molecular Psychiatry

30(4641–4650) doi: 10.1038/s41380-025-03054-5 PMID: 40394283

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Assessing Digital Phenotyping for App Recommendations and Sustained Engagement: Cohort Study

Bridget Dwyer, Matthew Flathers, James Burns, Jane Mikkelson, Elana Perlmutter, Kelly Chen, Nanik Ram, John Torous

JMIR Formative Research

8:e62725 doi: 10.2196/62725 PMID: 39560976

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Smartphone digital phenotyping in mental health disorders: A review of raw sensors utilized, machine learning processing pipelines, and derived behavioral features

Jake Linardon, Kelly Chen, Shruti Gajjar, Amrik Eadara, Shiwei Wang, Matthew Flathers, James Burns, John Torous

Psychiatry Research

348:116483 doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2025.116483 PMID: 40187059

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Conference Talks

Expanding the Scope of Digital Navigators for Mental Health with Generative AI

Matthew Flathers, Carla Gorban

MEXA x Wellcome Trust Accelerator In-Person Event, Wellcome Building, London, UK

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The Algorithm Will See You Now: From Subjective Ratings to Multimodal AI-Driven Psychiatric Assessments

Matteo Malgaroli, Katharina Schultebraucks, Isaac Galatzer-Levy, John Torous, Matthew Flathers

Society of Biological Psychiatry, Toronto, Canada

97(9S):A11 doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2025.02.013 PMID: 39978431

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Postsecondary Student Panel

Vanessa Britto, Olive Swinski, Matthew Flathers, Jeffrey Ellis, Ryan Yun

Rhode Island Higher Education Summit on Mental Health

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Inclusive Design Panel: Beyond Accessibility & Across Industries

Krystal Sarcone, Jennifer Spatz, Alexander Laferriere, Matthew Flathers

DesignxRI Design Week, Providence, RI

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Creative

Outside of work, I enjoy hanging out with my cat Salad Dressing, scouring library used book sales, and making unnecessary spreadsheets. My writing explores neurodivergence, generative AI, and American history/politics. Distilled further, my writing orbits the central theme: miscommunication.

To see what I have been reading lately, check out the Reading section of my website.

Fiction

Ungebundenheit

North American Review · 2025

Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Prize Finalist