The Position of Metaheuristic Optimization Methods in Psychiatric Practice: A Bibliometric Analysis

Mental diseases affect billions of people worldwide to varying degrees. This poses a risk to public health. Although the levels and effects of diseases vary, in general, mental diseases prevent people from having a healthy relationship with themselves and their environment and prevent them from living their daily lives efficiently. Individuals who move away from the comfort of daily life face many difficulties in their social and professional lives. People with long-term mental disorders may also experience physiological disorders due to stress. When this situation is not treated and prevented, it becomes a public health problem. Therefore, centers such as health institutions, research centers, and universities operating in the field of health carry out many studies to detect and treat mental disorders. These methods include traditional methods, but today, they also include artificial intelligence-supported methods. AI-powered methods are used for early diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses by analyzing large amounts of mental illness data of various types. Researchers are also using metaheuristic optimization algorithms to improve the performance of these methods. These optimization methods, which seek fast and high-performance solutions to very complex nonlinear problems, are increasing the success of machine learning and deep learning methods. Nonetheless, there is no distinct bibliometric analysis demonstrating the quantity and quality of research in this domain for scholars. This study aims to fill this gap in this field and to be a preliminary guide for researchers.