Mental Health and Addiction Care Professionals' Views on Artificial Intelligence Integration in Oman: A Descriptive Qualitative Study.

Abstract

Aim: To explore mental health and addiction care professionals' views on integrating artificial intelligence into clinical practice at a tertiary psychiatric hospital.

Design: A qualitative descriptive study.

Methods: Purposive sampling recruited 17 nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, translated from Arabic into English, and analysed through codebook-based thematic analysis informed by Braun and Clarke's six phases.

Results: Four themes were identified: variable familiarity with artificial intelligence (AI); actual experience with artificial intelligence and non-artificial-intelligence digital technologies, with telemedicine and electronic health records more common than AI-specific tools; anticipated benefits involving efficiency, clinical decision support, communication, data management, and service access; and anticipated barriers concerning infrastructure, resources, training, clinical suitability, therapeutic relationships, and ethics.

Conclusion: Participants were cautiously optimistic but had limited direct clinical experience and sometimes conflated AI with other digital technologies. Safe implementation requires a shared understanding of AI, reliable infrastructure, role-specific education, ethical governance, accountable human oversight, and protection of therapeutic relationships.

Patient or public contribution: No patients or members of the public were involved in the design, conduct, analysis, interpretation, or reporting of this study. The participants were healthcare professionals.