Intelligent Cognitive Assistants for Attitude and Behavior Change Support in Mental Health: State-of-the-Art Technical Review

Abstract

Intelligent cognitive assistant (ICA) technology is used in various domains to emulate human behavior expressed through synchronous communication, especially written conversation. Due to their ability to use individually tailored natural language, they present a powerful vessel to support attitude and behavior change. Behavior change support systems are emerging as a crucial tool in digital mental health services, and ICAs exceed in effective support, especially for stress, anxiety and depression (SAD), where ICAs guide people’s thought processes and actions by analyzing their affective and cognitive phenomena. Currently, there is no comprehensive review of such ICAs from a technical standpoint, and existing work is conducted exclusively from a psychological or medical perspective. This technical state-of-the-art review tried to discern and systematize current technological approaches and trends as well as detail the highly interdisciplinary landscape of intersections between ICAs, attitude and behavior change, and mental health, focusing on text-based ICAs for SAD. Ten papers with systems, fitting our criteria, were selected. The systems varied significantly in their approaches, with the most successful opting for comprehensive user models, classification-based assessment, personalized intervention, and dialogue tree conversational models.

Screening for Depression in Mobile Devices Using Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) Data: A Diagnostic Meta-Analysis via Machine Learning Methods

“…In particular, ICA can effectively support stress, anxiety, and depression (SAD) by analyzing people's emotional and cognitive phenomena. 14 Depression is the most frequent in psychiatric disorder studied via mobile devices. It affects more than 300 million people worldwide.…”

“…In particular, ICA can effectively support stress, anxiety, and depression (SAD) by analyzing people’s emotional and cognitive phenomena. 14 …”

A Semantic Web Framework for Automated Smart Assistants: A Case Study for Public Health

“…Conversational intelligent agents have been extensively researched and applied in many fields, including health care [24], finance [25], environmental sciences [26], psychology [27], and administration [28]. They have required the development of taxonomy, natural-language processing approaches, interaction methods and interfaces, and intent mapping (e.g., scoring), and are often developed for specific use cases by an experienced developer team.…”

An Intelligent Coaching Prototype for Elderly Care

“…In this sense, several studies were also observed using either physical or virtual robots or assistants to directly interact with the elderly person and attempt to persuade him/her to be healthier [8,[17][18][19][20][21][22]. In fact, the authors in [23] explained the importance of intelligent cognitive assistants to support attitude and behavior changes, which are crucial to protect against the deterioration of cognitive and mental health. Furthermore, other authors explain the importance of building a relationship with a virtual entity, and why this approach could be meaningful for the elderly person, promoting feelings of responsibility and even nostalgia as they to look after another person/being [24][25][26].…”