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- The emotional one is this: doctors have created a chatbot to relieve stress and anxiety among students
The emotional one is this: doctors have created a chatbot to relieve stress and anxiety among students
Russia has developed a neural network dialogue system for psychological support of university students under stress and anxiety. She asks the user a series of questions and suggests suitable trainings created by doctors. When creating the system, which will be available to everyone this year, the principles of telemedicine in psychiatry and assistance in extreme medicine, such as space medicine, were taken into account, the authors of the project said. For more information about how AI will provide psychological support to students and how to build communication with a machine psychologist, see the Izvestia article.
A chatbot for stress and anxiety relief
A neural network dialogue system for psychological support of university students under stress and anxiety was created by staff and students of Sechenov University together with colleagues from the V.P. Serbsky National Research Medical Center of Psychiatry and Narcology and M.T. Kalashnikov IzhSTU. The StressLessBuddy chatbot will be available on Telegram in the new academic year, the developers told Izvestia.
Currently, there are a large number of mobile applications for psychological assistance, but, as a rule, they were developed not by psychologists, but by programmers, and only some of the services were tested by experts and were based on classical methods of psychotherapy, the authors believe.
— We decided to create a resource that will help you cope with stress and anxiety anytime, anywhere. To do this, we integrated the already classic autogenic training technique in the format of a digital dialogue system," said Leonid Syrkin, professor of the Department of Pedagogy and Medical Psychology at the Institute of Psychological and Social Work at Sechenov University.
The new chatbot is a neural network dialog system that performs diagnostics and correction of anxiety and stress conditions. First, the user answers seven questions of the classic psychological test DASS-21 (Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales), developed by scientists at the University of Sydney. After that, the algorithms calculate the points scored during testing, assess the level of stress and anxiety, and select the auto-training that is most appropriate to a person's psychoemotional state. You can choose a workout on your own.
"When developing the system, the principles of telemedicine in psychiatry and the experience of psychological support for people in extreme medicine, including astronauts, were taken into account," said Ivan Rozanov, Senior researcher at the V.P. Serbsky National Research Medical Center for Psychiatry and Narcology, Candidate of Medical Sciences. — Of course, such systems should be tested before widespread implementation. This includes both an expert assessment and experimental studies that we have planned.
Only after that, the system can reach the scaling stage and be adapted to various practical healthcare needs, the specialist emphasized.
Earlier, information appeared on the Network that ChatGPT users were going crazy. AI assistants make people lose touch with reality, convince them of anti-scientific ideas and promote their belief in illusions. A post titled "ChatGPT-induced Psychosis" was posted on the Reddit portal. Its author, a 27-year-old girl, said that her young man was too interested in communicating with a chatbot and claims that he is working with him to create AI in order to get answers to all the questions of the universe.
As the developers of the StressLessBuddy bot told Izvestia, technology has its risks, and the issue of psychological safety in communication in the human—machine system with new interfaces, including chatbots and artificial intelligence, should be studied experimentally by psychologists in advance.
What training courses are available in the bot
Six training sessions will be available to the user. They are aimed at eliminating emotional stress, reducing arousal, optimizing the functional state of the body, mobilizing internal resources, restoring energy reserves and mental sensitization, that is, increasing the sensitivity of the psyche to certain stimuli. As the developers told Izvestia, regular concentration on pleasant stimuli, such as sounds of nature or images of tranquility, helps the psyche create "anchors" for relaxation and increases the body's sensitivity to positive signals.
The session lasts about five minutes on average. The user listens to the psychologist's voice superimposed on calm music and follows the instructions.
— For example, a person needs to take a certain position, relax different parts of the body, focus on certain sensations and images in a certain sequence. In fact, a chatbot is an automated workout for relaxation," said Rada Malovichko, a third-year student at the Institute of Psychological and Social Work at Sechenov University.
The chatbot can also remind you to undergo an additional diagnostic and correction procedure if you set a certain frequency of classes for it.
The authors conducted a pilot study that showed the effectiveness of the technique. It was attended by 48 students between the ages of 18 and 31. The participants were diagnosed before and after the session. The researchers recorded a statistically significant reduction in anxiety and stress, by an average of 10%.
— While the short—term effect has been assessed, the long-term effect will also have to be considered among a wide audience — this will be possible after the launch of the chatbot, - said Rada Malovichko.
She added that the service is provided primarily for students, but everyone can use it.
Can AI replace a psychotherapist
The sooner a person receives an overload signal, the more likely they are to adapt, adjust their workload, and maintain not only psychological but also physical health. This is especially important in the student environment, where stress levels often go unnoticed before the onset of acute phases, Evgeny Sobolev, co-founder of biotech studio Scanderm and market expert at NTI Helsnet, told Izvestia.
— Chatbots are a convenient way to get primary psychological support. It so happens that there is a stigmatization of psychological help in our society. And this is a more convenient and comfortable format from which to start," he said.
Almost all chatbots that exist now are based on Western LLM models (large language models) and have a fairly wide range of human counseling tools in various fields of psychology, said the founder of the Persona Talent AI platform, market expert at NTI Neuronet Vladimir Kozlov.
— The LLM model has absorbed all those mechanics and tools that are widely available, systematized them, and advises adults on this basis. In dialogue, the language model can provide a range of therapeutic tools. At the same time, one of the main problems of all neural networks is that, with their great capabilities, they lack one important element — their own desires. This is always a mirror image of some pre—configured algorithmic reactions that this neural network can use," he said.
According to the expert, people often do not feel how hard it is for them, how overloaded their children or employees are. Such tools are unlikely to be suitable for such untrained users, as they will not believe a chatbot and AI, the expert believes. And with all the dominance of artificial intelligence, humans still need humans, he stressed.
In part, the system, created with the participation of psychologists, will be able to solve the technical issues of psychotherapy, said Elena Solomeina, a leading specialist of the Semeynaya clinic network, a clinical psychologist. But psychotherapy is a complex system of interaction between two or more people who are empathically involved in communication. For those generations who now have a request for psychotherapy, the work of the neural network will solve only the technical side of the issue (offer certain techniques, accompany the patient). It is possible that the next generations will be able to completely dispense with an empathic response, but so far there is no way without it, she concluded.
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