Co-developing a Mental Health and Wellbeing Chatbot With and for Young People

Abstract

There are many young people who experience mental health and wellbeing challenges. A potential negative mental health trigger for some youth is a struggle to cope with stress at school, feelings of depression and anxiety and availability of adequate help for these stressors. In response to youth needs a mental health and wellbeing Chatbot has been co-developed with youth, technology partners and expert stakeholders. An element of the Chatbot is powered by artificial intelligence and rules based AI using natural language processing. It is created to communicate evidence based resources, wellbeing support, educational mental health information and adaptive coping strategies. This paper will discuss how the Chatbot has been developed, highlighting its participatory, co-design process with youth who are the key stakeholders to benefit from this digital tool. Research from interviews and surveys informed the creation of the Chabots personality and its character design. Examples of the conversation design and content development are provided. The paper finishes with how, if at all, digital tools such as Chatbot applications could support the mental health of young people in secondary schools or health care settings in conjunction with the wellbeing or health care team, concluding with lessons learned and cautions.

Chatbots to Support Mental Wellbeing of People Living in Rural Areas: Can User Groups Contribute to Co-design?

“…In a recent scoping review on mental health chatbots, 3 studies that Abd-Alrazaq et al looked at found that users would like to personalise their own chatbot by choosing the gender and appearance (Abd-Alrazaq et al, 2021 ). Another recent paper reported that young people wanted a chatbot with a gender neutral name that was inspiring, charismatic, fun, friendly and had an empathic and humorous personality (Grové, 2021 ). In our study, desirable features included a human persona who was female or gender neutral, aged approximately mid-thirties with an extroverted and supportive personality.…”

“…While many popular mental health chatbots exist, few studies have reported on how user groups can contribute to co-design as it is important to consider the user needs when designing content and features for this application. A few recent studies have involved young people in the design process to co-develop mental health and wellbeing chatbots targeted at under 18 s (Audrey et al, 2021 ; Grové, 2021 ). Another study by Easton et al reported on co-designing content for a health chatbot by involving patients with lived experiences (Easton et al, 2019 ).…”

How Far Can Conversational Agents Contribute to IBD Patient Health Care—A Review of the Literature

“…The application of two filters resulted as follows: first, 22 articles were published in 2020; second, and after selecting health topic as a domain area, 11 articles emerged as a final result. In the end, this material was spread across these different Frontier Journals categories: digital health ( N = 7) ( 20 – 26 ); public health ( N = 2) ( 27 , 28 ); and psychiatry ( N = 2) ( 29 , 30 ). All 11 titles were analyzed through a double review discussion.…”

Müşteri Hizmetleri Yönetiminde Yapay Zeka Temelli Chatbot Geliştirilmesi

“…Gençlerle Birlikte ve Gençler İçin Akıl Sağlığı ve Refahı Sohbet Robotu Geliştirmek isimli makalede ise Chatbot'un nasıl geliştirildiği tartışılmaktadır ve bu dijital araçtan yararlanacak kilit paydaşlar olan gençlerle katılımcı, ortak tasarım sürecini vurgulamaktadır. Görüşmelerden ve anketlerden elde edilen araştırmalar, Chabot kişiliğinin yaratılması ve karakter tasarımı hakkında bilgi verilmektedir [13]. Sağlık Sohbet Robotu isimli çalışmada hastaların sohbet robotu ile etkileşime girmesine yardımcı olmaktadır.…”