Robot-mediated interventions for youth mental health

Abstract

Evidence-based therapies have proven effective in treating the mental health of adolescents. However, these interventions are not without shortcomings: therapies are costly and not accessible for everyone who needs them; psychologists are scarce, with more adolescents needing support than therapists available. We contribute to mental health support tools with a digital robot agent that delivers micro-interventions to adolescents. Our key insight is that translating therapies traditionally provided in a physical workbook format to an interactive robot uncovers therapeutic mechanisms that promote healing. We present our translation process from workbook to robot-mediated therapy, which include the co-design of a robot with adolescents and heuristic evaluations with evidence-based clinical psychologists. This work presents a preliminary study with adolescents in which they used both the workbook (traditional medium) and the digital robot (interactive medium) during two consecutive weeks. Results show both a preference for the robot and more engagement of this treatment delivery option.

Keywords:

• Digital health
• participatory design
• evidence-based therapies
• youth

Note

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to all the adolescents that participated in our study. We also want to thank the clinical therapists for their time in this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Traditionally, ACT and DBT exist as physical workbooks that adolescents work through to improve their mental health. Examples of these workbooks include the ‘Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Training with Adolescents: A Practical Workbook for Therapists, Teens & Parents’ (Eich 2015), ‘Implementing Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Training for Emotional Problem Solving for Adolescents (DBT STEPS-A) in a Low-Income School’ (Chugani et al. 2022), ‘ACT for Adolescents: Treating Teens and Adolescents in Individual and Group Therapy’ (Turrell and Bell 2016) and ‘The Thriving Adolescent: Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Positive Psychology to Help Teens Manage Emotions, Achieve Goals, and Build Connection’ (Hayes and Ciarrochi 2015). Work in the field of digital health, such as mHealth, has found that digital interventions are extremely desirable and effective among adolescents (Anderson-Lewis et al. 2018; Jeminiwa, Hohmann, and Fox 2019).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported with funding by the NSF NRI: INT EMAR Project Award #1734100.

Notes on contributors

Patrícia Alves-Oliveira

Patricia Alves-Oliveira is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her research interests are in the field of human–robot interaction and her work aims to apply psychology and design research to create meaningful robots.

Tanya Budhiraja

Tanya Budhiraja completed her Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science and Social Sciences in 2021 and is currently working as an Associate Product Manager. Her research focuses on human–computer interaction.

Samuel So

Samuel So is a PhD student in Human Centered Design and Engineering at University of Washington, Seattle. His work focuses on the intersections between personal data and discursive design.

Raida Karim

Raida Karim graduated in June 2022 with a BS in Computer Science with a concentration in Data Science from University of Washington, Seattle. She is interested in human–robot interaction.

Elin Björling

Elin Björling is a Senior Research Scientist in the department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her area of research is the participatory design of technologies aimed to improve mental health.

Maya Cakmak

Maya Cakmak is an Associate Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her research interests are in human–robot interaction, end-user programming and assistive robotics. Her work aims to enable people with diverse skills and abilities to control and program various types of robots.