Machine learning for prediction of childhood mental health problems in social care.

backgroundRates of childhood mental health problems are increasing in the UK. Early identification of childhood mental health problems is challenging but critical to children's future psychosocial development. This is particularly important for children with social care contact because earlier identification can facilitate earlier intervention. Clinical prediction tools could improve these early intervention efforts.

aimsCharacterise a novel cohort consisting of children in social care and develop effective machine learning models for prediction of childhood mental health problems.

methodWe used linked, de-identified data from the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Databank to create a cohort of 26 820 children in Wales, UK, receiving social care services. Integrating health, social care and education data, we developed several machine learning models aimed at predicting childhood mental health problems. We assessed the performance, interpretability and fairness of these models.

resultsRisk factors strongly associated with childhood mental health problems included age, substance misuse and being a looked after child. The best-performing model, a gradient boosting classifier, achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.75 (95% CI 0.73-0.78). Assessments of algorithmic fairness showed potential biases within these models.

conclusionsMachine learning performance on this prediction task was promising. Predictive performance in social care settings can be bolstered by linking diverse routinely collected data-sets, making available a range of heterogenous risk factors relating to clinical, social and environmental exposures.