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International Conference on Brain Informatics

BIH 2016: Brain Informatics and Health pp 243–251Cite as

A Conversational Agent for an Online Mental Health Intervention

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9919))

Abstract

This study investigated suitability of chatbots for a mental health intervention, specifically alcohol drinking habits assessment. The target group was young adults 18–25 years, the highest consumers of alcohol per capita in Australia. A chatbot program was developed to perform a standard assessment of alcohol drinking habits (AUDIT-C, 3 items rated on 5-point scale) to determine the level of health risk. Additionally, the chatbot provided information and education on responsible alcohol use, giving recommendations and feedback post-assessment using a pre-populated database of factual response contents. Usability and user-satisfaction were determined by a cohort study of 17 volunteer participants. Overall, the trial indicated strong positive reception of the intervention by users.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, Western Sydney University, Penrith, Australia

    Danielle Elmasri

  2. School of Health Sciences, Flinders University, Bedford Park, Australia

    Anthony Maeder

Authors
  1. Danielle Elmasri
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  2. Anthony Maeder
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anthony Maeder .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

    Giorgio A. Ascoli

  2. Department of Modeling, Analysis and Theory, Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Michael Hawrylycz

  3. University of Nebraska Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska, USA

    Hesham Ali

  4. Information Science and Technology, University of Nebraska Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska, USA

    Deepak Khazanchi

  5. College of Information Sciences and Technology, University of Nebraska Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska, USA

    Yong Shi

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

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Elmasri, D., Maeder, A. (2016). A Conversational Agent for an Online Mental Health Intervention. In: Ascoli, G., Hawrylycz, M., Ali, H., Khazanchi, D., Shi, Y. (eds) Brain Informatics and Health. BIH 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9919. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47103-7_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47103-7_24

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47102-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47103-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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