skip to main content
research-article
Open Access

Can Chatbots Help Support a Person’s Mental Health? Perceptions and Views from Mental Healthcare Professionals and Experts

Published:15 July 2021Publication History
Skip Abstract Section

Abstract

The objective of this study was to understand the attitudes of professionals who work in mental health regarding the use of conversational user interfaces, or chatbots, to support people’s mental health and wellbeing. This study involves an online survey to measure the awareness and attitudes of mental healthcare professionals and experts. The findings from this survey show that more than half of the participants in the survey agreed that there are benefits associated with mental healthcare chatbots (65%, p < 0.01). The perceived importance of chatbots was also relatively high (74%, p < 0.01), with more than three-quarters (79%, p < 0.01) of respondents agreeing that mental healthcare chatbots could help their clients better manage their own health, yet chatbots are overwhelmingly perceived as not adequately understanding or displaying human emotion (86%, p < 0.01). Even though the level of personal experience with chatbots among professionals and experts in mental health has been quite low, this study shows that where they have been used, the experience has been mostly satisfactory. This study has found that as years of experience increased, there was a corresponding increase in the belief that healthcare chatbots could help clients better manage their own mental health.

References

  1. Gerhard Andersson. 2016. Internet-delivered psychological treatments. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 12 (2016), 157–179.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  2. R. R. Bond, Siobhan O’Neill, Edel Ennis, and Maurice Mulvenna. 2019. Chatbots for mental health and suicide prevention: Is this even ethical? In Proceedings of the European Conference on Mental Health.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  3. DanaKai Bradford and David Ireland. 2016. Virtually There: Chatbots for Mental Health support? Retrieved April 27, 2021 from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9dfe/eb34503a318d5c25fbd037258826e31dcd9f.pdf.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  4. Petter Bae Brandtzaeg and Asbjørn Følstad. 2017. Why people use chatbots. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Internet Science. 377–392.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  5. Gillian Cameron, David Cameron, Gavin Megaw, Raymond Bond, Maurice Mulvenna, Siobhan O’Neill, Cherie Armour, and Michael McTear. 2018. Assessing the usability of a chatbot for mental health care. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Internet Science. 121–132.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  6. G. Cameron, D. Cameron, G. Megaw, R. Bond, M. Mulvenna, S. O’Neill, C. Armour, and M. McTear. 2017. Towards a chatbot for digital counselling. In Proceedings of the 31st British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Conference. Article 24, 7 pages.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  7. Helen Christensen, Kathleen M. Griffiths, and Louise Farrer. 2009. Adherence in Internet interventions for anxiety and depression: Systematic review. Journal of Medical Internet Research 11, 2 (2009), e13.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  8. Kyungyong Chung and Roy C. Park. 2019. Chatbot-based heathcare service with a knowledge base for cloud computing. Cluster Computing 22, 1 (2019), 1925–1937.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  9. Kevin Cullen. 2018. eMental Health State-of-the-Art & Opportunities for Ireland. Technical Report. Work Research Centre. https://www.mentalhealthreform.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/eMental-Health-State-of-the-art-Opportunities-for-Ireland-Full-Report.pdf.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  10. Kathleen Kara Fitzpatrick, Alison Darcy, and Molly Vierhile. 2017. Delivering cognitive behavior therapy to young adults with symptoms of depression and anxiety using a fully automated conversational agent (Woebot): A randomized controlled trial. JMIR Mental Health 4, 2 (2017), e19.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  11. Asbjørn Følstad and Petter Bae Brandtzæg. 2017. Chatbots and the new world of HCI. Interactions 24, 4 (2017), 38–42.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  12. Russell Fulmer, Angela Joerin, Breanna Gentile, Lysanne Lakerink, and Michiel Rauws. 2018. Using psychological artificial intelligence (Tess) to relieve symptoms of depression and anxiety: Randomized controlled trial. JMIR Mental Health 5, 4 (2018), e64.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  13. Adam C. Jaroszewski, Robert R. Morris, and Matthew K. Nock. 2019. Randomized controlled trial of an online machine learning-driven risk assessment and intervention platform for increasing the use of crisis services.Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 87, 4 (2019), 370.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  14. Tobias Kowatsch, Dirk Volland, Iris Shih, Dominik Rüegger, Florian Künzler, Filipe Barata, Andreas Filler, et al. 2017. Design and evaluation of a mobile chat app for the open source behavioral health intervention platform MobileCoach. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Design Science Research in Information System and Technology. 485–489.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  15. Kira Kretzschmar, Holly Tyroll, Gabriela Pavarini, Arianna Manzini, Ilina Singh, and NeurOx Young People’s Advisory Group. 2019. Can your phone be your therapist? Young people’s ethical perspectives on the use of fully automated conversational agents (chatbots) in mental health support. Biomedical Informatics Insights 11 (2019), 1178222619829083.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  16. Lisa A. Chalaguine, Fiona L. Hamilton, Anthony Hunter, and Henry W. W. Potts. 2018. Argument harvesting using chatbots. Computational Models of Argument: Proceedings of COMMA 2018 305 (2018), 149.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  17. Gale M. Lucas, Albert Rizzo, Jonathan Gratch, Stefan Scherer, Giota Stratou, Jill Boberg, and Louis-Philippe Morency. 2017. Reporting mental health symptoms: Breaking down barriers to care with virtual human interviewers. Frontiers in Robotics and AI 4 (2017), 51.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  18. Claudia Martinez and Imogen Farhan. 2019. Making the right choices. Retrieved April 27, 2021 from https://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/∼/media/bl/global/social-welfare/pdfs/non-secure/m/a/k/making-right-choices-using-data-driven%20technology-19.pdf.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  19. Patrick McAllister, James Kerr, Michael McTear, Maurice Mulvenna, Raymond Bond, Karen Kirby, Joseph Morning, and Danni Glover. 2020. Towards chatbots to support bibliotherapy preparation and delivery. In Chatbot Research and Design, Asbjørn Følstad, Theo Araujo, Symeon Papadopoulos, Effie Lai-Chong Law, Ole-Christoffer Granmo, Ewa Luger, and Petter Bae Brandtzaeg (Eds.). Springer International, Cham, Switzerland, 127–142.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  20. Adam Miner, Amanda Chow, Sarah Adler, Ilia Zaitsev, Paul Tero, Alison Darcy, and Andreas Paepcke. 2016. Conversational agents and mental health: Theory-informed assessment of language and affect. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Human Agent Interaction. 123–130.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  21. Adam S. Miner, Arnold Milstein, and Jefferey T. Hancock. 2017. Talking to machines about personal mental health problems. JAMA 318, 13 (2017), 1217–1218.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  22. David C. Mohr, Michelle Nicole Burns, Stephen M. Schueller, Gregory Clarke, and Michael Klinkman. 2013. Behavioral intervention technologies: Evidence review and recommendations for future research in mental health. General Hospital Psychiatry 35, 4 (2013), 332–338.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  23. Megan Molteni. 2017. The chatbot therapist will see you now. Science-Wired Magazine. Retrieved April 27, 2021 from https://www.wired.com/2017/06/facebook-messenger-woebot-chatbot-therapist.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  24. Adam Palanica, Peter Flaschner, Anirudh Thommandram, Michael Li, and Yan Fossat. 2019. Physicians’ perceptions of chatbots in health care: Cross-sectional web-based survey. Journal of Medical Internet Research 21, 4 (2019), e12887.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  25. Sami Pirkola, Heidi Eriksen, Erkki Isometsä, Aino Joensuu, Pekka Jylhä, Virve Kekkonen, Hannu Koponen, et al. 2020. Suicide Prevention and Suicide Attempt. Current Care Recommendation. Technical Report. Finnish General Medical Association, Helsinki. https://www.kaypahoito.fi/en/ccs00130.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  26. Kristian Pollock, Sarah Armstrong, Catherine Coveney, and John Moore. 2010. An Evaluation of Samaritans Telephone and Email Emotional Support Service. University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  27. Nicole M. Radziwill and Morgan C. Benton. 2017. Evaluating quality of chatbots and intelligent conversational agents. arXiv:1704.04579.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  28. Marita Skjuve and Petter Bae Brandtzæg. 2018. Chatbots as a new user interface for providing health information to young people. In Youth and News in a Digital Media Environment: Nordic-Baltic Perspectives, Y. Andersson, U. Dalquist, and J. Ohlsson (Eds.). Nordicom, Goteborg, Sweden, 59–66.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  29. Aditya Nrusimha Vaidyam, Hannah Wisniewski, John David Halamka, Matcheri S. Kashavan, and John Blake Torous. 2019. Chatbots and conversational agents in mental health: A review of the psychiatric landscape. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 64, 7 (2019), 456–464.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  30. J. Weizenbaum. 1965. ElizaA computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine. Communications of the ACM 9, 36 (1965), 45.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  31. Julia Shuppert West, Lynda Kayser, Paul Overton, and Robert Saltmarsh. 1991. Student perceptions that inhibit the initiation of counseling. School Counselor 39, 2 (1991), 77–83.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  32. Rainer Winkler and Matthias Söllner. 2018. Unleashing the potential of chatbots in education: A state-of-the-art analysis. Retrieved April 27, 2021 from https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/254848/1/JML_699.pdf.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

Index Terms

  1. Can Chatbots Help Support a Person’s Mental Health? Perceptions and Views from Mental Healthcare Professionals and Experts

          Recommendations

          Comments

          Login options

          Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

          Sign in

          Full Access

          PDF Format

          View or Download as a PDF file.

          PDF

          eReader

          View online with eReader.

          eReader

          HTML Format

          View this article in HTML Format .

          View HTML Format
          About Cookies On This Site

          We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website.

          Learn more

          Got it!