Robot-mediated interventions for youth mental health
P. Alves-Oliveira, T. Budhiraja, S. So, R. Karim, E. Björling, and M. Cakmak, “Robot-mediated interventions for youth mental health,” Design for Health, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 138–162, 2022, doi: 10.1080/24735132.2022.2101825.
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.
BibTeX Entry
@article{alves2022robot,
title = {Robot-mediated interventions for youth mental health},
author = {Alves-Oliveira, Patricia and Budhiraja, Tanya and So, Samuel and Karim, Raida and Bj{\"o}rling, Elin and Cakmak, Maya},
year = {2022},
journal = {Design for Health},
publisher = {Taylor \& Francis},
volume = {6},
number = {2},
pages = {138--162},
url = {https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/24735132.2022.2101825},
type = {journal},
doi = {10.1080/24735132.2022.2101825}
}