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Effectiveness and Acceptance of Conversational Agent-Based Psychotherapy for Depression and Anxiety Treatment: Methodological Literature Review

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Intelligent Systems and Applications (IntelliSys 2024)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 1065))

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Abstract

Conversational agent-based psychotherapy is a novel field of research. Its importance has rapidly increased in recent years due to the heightened demand for psychotherapy treatment options and a related demand for cost-effective, scalable, and low-threshold solutions to provide mental health support to the general population. This methodological literature review investigates the current state of research on the effectiveness and acceptance of chatbot and voice assistant-based psychotherapy approaches by focusing on used measurement methods and achieved study outcomes. Following the updated PRISMA guidelines for reporting systematic reviews 1432 publications are identified and reduced to a result set of 22 publications based on a rigorous screening process. Overall, the current state of research suggests that conversational agents might be an effective treatment option for people with depression and anxiety and show good acceptance by users. As there is a high heterogeneity of study designs, and methodologies, and a lack of randomized controlled trials with conventional treatment control groups, more research in the field is needed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Springer Link, link.springer.com, access date 23.12.23.

  2. 2.

    ACM Digital Library, dl.acm.org, access date 23.12.23.

  3. 3.

    PubMed, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, access date 23.12.23.

  4. 4.

    IEEE Xplore, ieeexplore.ieee.org, access date 23.12.23.

  5. 5.

    BBC Report: Child advice chatbots fail to spot sexual abuse, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46507900, access date: 13.03.2024.

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Correspondence to Julian Striegl .

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Striegl, J., Rottmann, S., Loitsch, C. (2024). Effectiveness and Acceptance of Conversational Agent-Based Psychotherapy for Depression and Anxiety Treatment: Methodological Literature Review. In: Arai, K. (eds) Intelligent Systems and Applications. IntelliSys 2024. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 1065. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-66329-1_14

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