March 28 - Technology media outlet newatlas published a blog post yesterday (March 27) reporting that a generative AI chatbot developed at Dartmouth College Therabot,In the first of its kind formental healthShining performance in randomized clinical trials of the problem.
106 U.S. participants with major depressive disorder (MDD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), or eating disorders experienced an average reduction of 511 TP3T in depressive symptoms, a reduction of 311 TP3T in anxiety symptoms, and an improvement of 191 TP3T in body image perceptions for those with eating disorders after four weeks of use of the robot.The research team says this effect is comparable to traditional offline cognitive therapy.
Unlike passive responding bots such as ChatGPT, Therabot develops conversational library training based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) best practices, actively initiates conversations, guides the user to record changes in mood, and the system has a built-in suicide risk identification system that allows it to be routed to emergency help with a single click.
1AI cites a blog post describing 75% users who received no other treatments concurrently, with an average interaction duration of 6 hours (equivalent to 8 traditional treatments), and a self-reported "therapeutic alliance" with the AI with a level of trust approaching that of a real-life doctor.751 The blog post also describes how the patients' trust in the AI is similar to that of a real-life doctor.
Nicholas Jacobson, senior author of the study and an associate professor at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, noted:
- AI can't replace real-life therapy, but it can fill a gap in services -- 1,600 patients for every psychologist in the US.
First author Michael Heinz points out the central contradiction:
- The real-time companionship benefits of AI are also a source of risk -- a patient could say anything and the AI could respond inappropriately.
Therabot is still running under the supervision of the Dartmouth AI and Mental Health Lab and is not open for commercial use.
