TY - JOUR
T1 - Can Chatbots Help Support a Person’s Mental Health?
T2 - Perceptions and Views from Mental Healthcare Professionals and Experts
AU - Sweeney, Colm
AU - Potts, Courtney
AU - Ennis, Edel
AU - Bond, RR
AU - Mulvenna, Maurice
AU - O'Neill, Siobhan
AU - Malcolm, Martin
AU - Kuosmanen, Lauri
AU - Kostenius, Catrine
AU - Vakaloudis, Alex
AU - McConvey, Gavin
AU - Turkington, Robin
AU - Hanna, David
AU - Nieminen, Heidi
AU - Vartiainen, Anna-Kaisa
AU - Robertson, Alison
AU - McTear, Michael
PY - 2021/7/15
Y1 - 2021/7/15
N2 - 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 over 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 to 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.
AB - 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 over 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 to 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.
KW - chatbots
KW - mental healthcare professionals
KW - conversational user interfaces
KW - mental health
KW - mental health survey
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1145/3453175
DO - https://doi.org/10.1145/3453175
M3 - Article
SN - 2691-1957
VL - 2
SP - 1
EP - 15
JO - ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare
JF - ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare
IS - 3
M1 - 25
ER -