Chatbot features for anxiety and depression: A scoping review

Abstract

Chatbots can provide valuable support to patients in assessing and guiding management of various health problems particularly when human resources are scarce. Chatbots can be affordable and efficient on-demand virtual assistants for mental health conditions, including anxiety and depression. We review features of chatbots available for anxiety or depression. Six bibliographic databases were searched including backward and forwards reference list checking. The initial search returned 1302 citations. Post-filtering, 42 studies remained forming the final dataset for this scoping review. Most of the studies were from conference proceedings (62%, 26/42), followed by journal articles (26%, 11/42), reports (7%, 3/42), or book chapters (5%, 2/42). About half of the reviewed chatbots had functionality targeting both anxiety and depression (60%, 25/42), whereas 38% (16/42) targeted only depression, 38% (16/42) anxiety and the remaining addressed other mental health issues along with anxiety and depression. Avatars or fictional characters were rarely used in these studies only 26% (11/42) despite their increasing popularity. Mental health chatbots could benefit in helping patients with anxiety and depression and provide valuable support to mental healthcare workers, particularly when resources are scarce. Real-time personal virtual assistance fills in this gap . Their role in mental health care is expected to increase.

Designing, Developing, and Testing a Chatbot for Parents and Caregivers of Children and Young People With Rheumatological Conditions (the IMPACT Study): Protocol for a Co-Designed Proof-of-Concept Study

“…Over the last few years, as chatbot technology has developed at an alarming rate, with large language models now leading the way, their popularity has increased [ 31 ]. While it is not possible to be specific regarding the content of the chatbot until the focus groups have been completed and analyzed, a content management system will be developed to inform the chatbot development.…”

Chatbots and mental health: A scoping review of reviews

“…In this scoping review we have reported on 17 existing reviews focusing on chatbots for mental health. The country of the institution of the first author were: Qatar (4 reviews: Abd-Alrazaq et al, 2019, 2021Ahmed et al, 2023), Spain (2 reviews: Otero-González et al, 2024, Pachenco-Lorenzo et al, 2021, England (2 reviews: Gaffney et al, 2019, Ogilvie et al, 2022, USA (2 reviews : Vaidyam et al, 2019: Vaidyam et al, , 2020, Singapore (2 reviews: Jabir et al, 2023;Lim et al, 2022), Australia (Martin & Richmond, 2023), China (He et al, 2023), Germany (Bendig et al, 2022), andMexico (Martínez-Miranda, 2017). The reviews included six to 54 articles.…”

“…Interestingly, more of the studies included in the reviews were published from 2018 (134 studies) than before (104 studies) and most of the studies were included in only one review (72%). This can be notably explained by the fact that the focus of the reviews were partly diverging, but also by differences in search strategies and screening processes, and of course that some studies were published after the literature search was carried out for some reviews, or that some later reviews only included recent studies (e.g., Ahmed et al, 2023).…”

“…The included reviews varied in focus (e.g., features of chatbots, e.g., Ahmed et al, 2023;perceptions of chatbots, e.g., Abd-Alrazaq et al, 2021; the outcomes and their measurement, e.g., Jabir et al, 2023; the efficacy of chatbots, e.g., He et al, 2023) and specificity (for instance mental health in general, e.g., Bendig et al, 2019;vs specific disorders, Ogilvie et al, 2022, or specific populations, for instance children, e.g., Martin & Richmond, 2023). Seven articles included here were scoping reviews, seven were systematic reviews (2 of which with meta-analyses) and two were unlabelled reviews.…”

A survey of autonomous monitoring systems in mental health

“…Since then, interest has grown particularly in the field of mental health (Abd-Alrazaq et al, 2019;Almalki & Azeez, 2020;Milne-Ives et al, 2020). While many focus on depression or anxiety (Ahmed et al, 2023), others address issues such as suicidal ideation (Dharmapuri et al, 2022), substance abuse (Prochaska et al, 2021) and PTSD (Han et al, 2023). Applications linked to mental health (Ly et al, 2017), self-love (Lee et al, 2019), consciousness (Kumar et al, 2023), and the standard of life (Valtolina & Charlie, 2021) are also included, in addition to those specifically relevant to mood disorders.…”