A fully automated conversational agent for promoting mental well-being: A pilot RCT using mixed methods
By Kien Hoa Ly, A. Ly, Gerhard Andersson. Internet Interventions, 2017
332 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Fully automated self-help interventions can serve as highly cost-effective mental health promotion tools for massive amounts of people. However, these interventions are often characterised by poor adherence. One way to address this problem is to mimic therapy support by a conversational agent. The objectives of this study were to assess the effectiveness and adherence of a smartphone app, delivering strategies used in positive psychology and CBT interventions via an automated chatbot (Shim) for a non-clinical population — as well as to explore participants' views and experiences of interacting with this chatbot. A total of 28 participants were randomized to either receive the chatbot intervention (n = 14) or to a wait-list control group (n = 14). Findings revealed that participants who adhered to the intervention (n = 13) showed significant interaction effects of group and time on psychological well-being (FS) and perceived stress (PSS-10) compared to the wait-list control group, with small to large between effect sizes (Cohen's d range 0.14–1.06). Also, the participants showed high engagement during the 2-week long intervention, with an average open app ratio of 17.71 times for the whole period. This is higher compared to other studies on fully automated interventions claiming to be highly engaging, such as Woebot and the Panoply app. The qualitative data revealed sub-themes which, to our knowledge, have not been found previously, such as the moderating format of the chatbot. The results of this study, in particular the good adherence rate, validated the usefulness of replicating this study in the future with a larger sample size and an active control group. This is important, as the search for fully automated, yet highly engaging and effective digital self-help interventions for promoting mental health is crucial for the public health.
Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/67993b75dd66254beedc631bbaa9375f5fdf8aad
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Citations in the corpus
- The Effectiveness of Artificial Intelligence Conversational Agents in Health Care: Systematic Review (2020, methodology): “The most frequently raised issue with conversational agents (9 studies) was poor understanding because of limited vocabulary, voice recognition accuracy, or error management of word inputs [13,32-37,41,52].”
- An Empathy-Driven, Conversational Artificial Intelligence Agent (Wysa) for Digital Mental Well-Being: Real-World Data Evaluation Mixed-Methods Study (2018, background): “Our study results were compared with other RCT studies [31,32] using an automated text-based conversational agent intervention to study impact on participants’ mental well-being.”
- Acceptability of artificial intelligence (AI)-led chatbot services in healthcare: A mixed-methods study (2019, background): “demonstrated the effectiveness of a chatbot based on cognitive behavioural therapy and positive psychology interactions in the non-clinical population.(20) There was a significant impact on well-being and perceived stress, with some participants reporting a specific ‘digital relationship’ with the c”
- Chatbot for Health Care and Oncology Applications Using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Systematic Review (2021, positive): “Chatbots used for psychological support hold great potential, as individuals are more comfortable disclosing personal information when no judgments are formed, even if users could still discriminate their responses from that of humans [82,85].”
- Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing in Mental Health: Systematic Review (2021, positive): “Ly et al [50] proposed using interventions based on an automated self-help system as a way to make mental health promotion tools more widely accessible.”
- Artificially intelligent chatbots in digital mental health interventions: a review (2021, methodology): “In another study, participants using a mobile intervention perceived the guidance and direction offered by the chatbot in the program as beneficial [61].”
- Conversational Agents in Health Care: Scoping Review and Conceptual Analysis (2020, methodology): “Eight studies presented conversational agents for managing mental health using techniques such as counseling [67]; cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) [64,80] method of levels therapy [57]; positive psychology [61]; provision of a virtual companion [66]; and a combination of modalities such as CBT wi”