In this episode of Let’s Talk About That, Anirvan Ghosh speaks with Mariam Khayretdinova, – neuroscientist, data scientist, founder of Brainify.AI, and author of ‘Decoding Despair: How AI Is Reshaping Psychiatry’ – about rethinking how we understand and treat depression—one of the most widespread and complex illnesses of our time.

Mariam’s journey into mental health began with her own lived experience. Growing up with undiagnosed depression in a culture where mental illness was stigmatized and poorly understood, she spent years navigating symptoms without a framework for what she was experiencing or how to seek help.

That experience now informs her work at the intersection of neuroscience, data science, and artificial intelligence. In the conversation, Mariam explains why psychiatry still relies heavily on subjective, symptom-based diagnoses, and why current treatments often follow a trial-and-error approach that can take months—or years—to find something that works.

She outlines a new vision: using large-scale biological, behavioral, and digital data to uncover objective biomarkers of mental illness and move toward truly personalized care. From EEG-based models to AI-driven early detection tools, Mariam explores how advances in data and computation could transform psychiatry into a more precise and predictive discipline, leading to better outcomes for patients.