Abstract
Due to the coronavirus pandemic international conflicts, dramatic changes of daily living have been enforced, including new ways of providing patient assistance, based on artificial intelligence. The influence of these changes on people's mental health is still insufficiently analyzed and explored. Chatbots like Woebot, Wysa and Tess are gaining popularity, being attractive and easy to use. These achievements led us to develop a new application, being still in the testing phase, which has a positive impact on mental healthcare issues. It is a conversational system capable to diagnose people's negative, depressive, and anxious emotions during chatting, and to act as a psychological therapist and virtual friend. The proposed system, throughout the conversation, succeeds to decrease the patient's insecurity sentiments, by comforting their mood. In fact, an intelligent assistant for different mental health issues like stress, anxiety and depression, could become a very helpful information system.
Keywords: virtual assistant, sentiment analysis, mental healthcare
References
- 1.Ouatu, Bogdan, Gîfu, Daniela (2020) “Chatbot, the Future of Learning?” Ludic, Co-design and Tools Supporting Smart Learning Ecosystems and Smart Education, Springer, 263-268.
- 2.Nof S.Y., Ceroni J., Jeong W., Moghaddam M. Springer Cham; 2015. Revolutionizing Collaboration through e-Work, e-Business, and e-Service. [Google Scholar]
- 3.Filip. F.G. Automation and computers and their contribution to human well-being and resilience. Studies in Informatics and Control”. 2021;30(4):5–18. doi: 10.24846/v30i4y202101. [DOI] [Google Scholar]
- 4.Miner Adam S., Laranjo Liliana, Kocaballi A.Baki. Chatbots in the Fight Against the COVID-19 Pandemic. npj Digit. Med. 2020;3(65) doi: 10.1038/s41746-020-0280-0. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 5.Laranjo Liliana, Dunn Adam G., Tong Huong Ly, Kocaballi Ahmet Baki, Chen Jessica, Bashir Rabia, Surian Didi, Gallego Blanca, Magrabi Farah, Lau Annie Y.S., Coiera Enrico. Conversational Agents in Healthcare: A Systematic Review. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2018;25(9):1248–1258. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocy072. Sep 1PMID: 30010941; PMCID: PMC6118869. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 6.Lucas Gale M., Gratch Jonathan, King Aisha, Morency Louis-Philippe. It's Only a computer: Virtual Humans Increase Willingness to Disclose. Comput. Hum. Behav. 2014;37:94–100. [Google Scholar]
- 7.Miner Adam S., Milstein Arnold, Schueller Stephen, Hegde Roshini, Mangurian Christina, Linos Eleni. Smartphone-Based Conversational Agents and Responses to Questions About Mental Health, Interpersonal Violence, and Physical Health. JAMA Intern Med. 2016;176(5) doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.0400. May 1619-25Erratum in: JAMA Intern Med. 2016 May 1;176(5):719. PMID: 26974260; PMCID: PMC4996669. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 8.Vaidyam Aditya Nrusimha, Wisniewski Hannah, Halamka John David, Kashavan M.S., Torous J.B. Chatbots and Conversational Agents in Mental Health: A Review of the Psychiatric Landscape. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. 2019;64(7):456–464. doi: 10.1177/0706743719828977. JulEpub 2019 Mar 21. PMID: 30897957; PMCID: PMC6610568. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 9.Steinhubl Steven R., Topol Eric J. Now we're Talking: Bringing a Voice to Digital Medicine. Lancet. 2018;392:627. [Google Scholar]
- 10.Bickmore T.W., Trinh H., Olafsson S., O'Leary T.K., Asadi R., Rickles N.M., Cruz R. Patient and Consumer Safety Risks When Using Conversational Assistants for Medical Information: An Observational Study of Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. J Med Inter-net Res. 2018;20(9):e11510. doi: 10.2196/11510. Sep 4PMID: 30181110; PMCID: PMC6231817. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 11.Nobles Alicia L.Leas, Eric C., Caputi Theodore L., Zhu Shu-Hong, Strathdee Steffanie A., Ayers John W. Responses to addiction help-seeking from Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana, and Bixby intelligent virtual assistants. npj Digit. Med. 2020;3(11) doi: 10.1038/s41746-019-0215-9. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 12.Kocaballi A.B., et al. Responses of Conversational Agents to Health and Lifestyle Prompts: Investigation of Appropriateness and Presentation Structures. J. Med. Internet Res. 2020;22:e15823. doi: 10.2196/15823. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 13.Meadows R., Hine C., Suddaby E. Conversational Agents and the Making of Mental Health Recovery. Digital Health. 2020;6 doi: 10.1177/2055207620966170. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 14.Liu H, Peng H., Song X., Xu C., Zhang M. Using AI Chatbots to Provide Self-Help Depression Interventions for University Students: A Randomized Trial of Effectiveness. Internet Interventions. 2022;27 doi: 10.1016/j.invent.2022.100495. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 15.Abd-Alrazaq A.A., Alajlani M., Alalwan A.A., et al. An Overview of the Features of Chatbots in Mental Health: A Scoping Review. In: Int J Med Inform; 2020;132 doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2019.103978. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 16.Fitzpatrick K.K., Darcy A., Vierhile M. JMIR Ment. Heal. 4 Article e19. 2017. Delivering Cognitive Behavior Therapy to Young Adults with Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety Using a Fully Automated Con-versational Agent (Woebot): a Randomized Controlled Trial. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 17.Inkster B., Sarda S., Subramanian V. An Empathy-Driven, Conversational Artificial Intel-ligence Agent (Wysa) for Digital Mental Well-Being: Real-World Data Evaluation Mixed-Methods Study. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2018;6:e12106. doi: 10.2196/12106. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 18.Joerin A., Rauws M., Ackerman M.L. Vol. 11. 2019. Psychological Artificial Intelligence Service, Tess: Delivering On-demand Support to Patients and Their Caregivers; p. e3972. (Cu-reus). Technical Report. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 19.Clarke J. Can Artificial Intelligence Help with Depression? Verywell.mind. 2019 https://www.verywellmind.com/can-artificial-intelligence-help-depression-4158330 [Google Scholar]
- 20.Fulmer R., Joerin A., Gentile B., Lakerink L., Rauws M. Using Psychological Artificial Intelligence (Tess) to Relieve Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety: Randomized Con-trolled Trial. JMIR Ment Health. Dec. 2018;13(4):e64. doi: 10.2196/mental.9782. 5PMID: 30545815; PMCID: PMC6315222. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 21.Berg M.: Making Sense with Sensors: Self-Tracking and the Temporalities of Wellbeing. In: Digital Health, January, 3: 2055207617699767 (2017). DOI:10.1177/2055207617699767 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed]
- 22.Vargas J.H., Marafon T.A., Couto D.F., Giglio R., Yan M., Rolle C. JMIR Publications Inc; 2019. A fully auto-mated conversational agent with artificial intelligence capabilities (Youper) for treating de-pression and anxiety: A nonrandomized feasibility trial (Preprint) [DOI] [Google Scholar]
- 23.Mehta A., Niles A.N., Vargas J.H., Marafon T., Couto D.D., Gross J.J. Acceptability and Effectiveness of Artificial Intelligence Therapy for Anxiety and Depression (Youper): Longitudinal Observational Study. Journal of medical Internet research. 2021;23(6):e26771. doi: 10.2196/26771. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 24.Zhang, Y., Sun, S., Galley, M., Chen, Y. C., Brockett, C., Gao, X., ... & Dolan, B.: Dialogpt: Large-scale generative pre-training for conversational response generation. arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.00536 (2019).
- 25.Bender E.M., Gebru T., McMillan-Major A., Shmitchell S. Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. 2021. On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? pp. 610–623. [Google Scholar]