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Pre-trained Language Models (PLMs) have the potential to transform mental health support by providing accessible and culturally sensitive resources. However, despite this potential, their effectiveness in mental health care and specifically for the Arabic language has not been extensively explored. To bridge this gap, this study evaluates the effectiveness of foundational models for classification of Questions and Answers (Q&A) in the domain of mental health care. We leverage the MentalQA dataset, an Arabic collection featuring Q&A interactions related to mental health. In this study, we conducted experiments using four different types of learning approaches: traditional feature extraction, PLMs as feature extractors, Fine-tuning PLMs and prompting large language models (GPT-3.5 and GPT-4) in zero-shot and few-shot learning settings. While traditional feature extractors combined with Support Vector Machines (SVM) showed promising performance, PLMs exhibited even better results due to their ability to capture semantic meaning. For example, MARBERT achieved the highest performance with a Jaccard Score of 0.80 for question classification and a Jaccard Score of 0.86 for answer classification. We further conducted an in-depth analysis including examining the effects of fine-tuning versus non-fine-tuning, the impact of varying data size, and conducting error analysis. Our analysis demonstrates that fine-tuning proved to be beneficial for enhancing the performance of PLMs, and the size of the training data played a crucial role in achieving high performance. We also explored prompting, where few-shot learning with GPT-3.5 yielded promising results. There was an improvement of 12% for question and classification and 45% for answer classification. Based on our findings, it can be concluded that PLMs and prompt-based approaches hold promise for mental health support in Arabic.

Mental health disorders significantly impact people globally, regardless of background, education, or socioeconomic status. However, access to adequate care remains a challenge, particularly for underserved communities with limited resources. Text mining tools offer immense potential to support mental healthcare by assisting professionals in diagnosing and treating patients. This study addresses the scarcity of Arabic mental health resources for developing such tools. We introduce MentalQA, a novel Arabic dataset featuring conversational-style question-and-answer (QA) interactions. To ensure data quality, we conducted a rigorous annotation process using a well-defined schema with quality control measures. Data was collected from a question-answering medical platform. The annotation schema for mental health questions and corresponding answers draws upon existing classification schemes with some modifications. Question types encompass six distinct categories: diagnosis, treatment, anatomy \& physiology, epidemiology, healthy lifestyle, and provider choice. Answer strategies include information provision, direct guidance, and emotional support. Three experienced annotators collaboratively annotated the data to ensure consistency. Our findings demonstrate high inter-annotator agreement, with Fleiss' Kappa of $0.61$ for question types and $0.98$ for answer strategies. In-depth analysis revealed insightful patterns, including variations in question preferences across age groups and a strong correlation between question types and answer strategies. MentalQA offers a valuable foundation for developing Arabic text mining tools capable of supporting mental health professionals and individuals seeking information., Comment: Ongoing (under-review), 10 pages, 7 figures, 5 tables