Dr. Lisa D. Hawke is a staff scientist with the McCain Centre for Child and Youth Mental Health at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). She is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. Dr. Hawke received her PhD from Université Laval in Québec City in psychology, then completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at Toronto’s University Health Network. At CAMH, Dr. Hawke's research focuses on the engagement of people with lived experience in mental health and substance use research. She also conducts research on topics of high priority to people with lived experience, including youth mental health. She has a particular interest in improving engagement process, understanding lived experiences of mental health and mental health systems, and examining aspects of stigma and stigma reduction. Dr.Hawke has funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and other funding bodies to pursue this line of work.
Digital Conversational Agents for Youth Mental Health:
A literature review and qualitative study
Youth are high users of digital technology, but there is a lack of research on the use of AI chatbots for youth with mental health conditions. We reviewed the recent scientific literature to understand the current state of the research on AI chatbots. There is a small and emerging body of research on AI chatbots for youth mental health. Acceptability of interventions delivered through AI chatbot technology seems to be high, but there is very little research examining
whether AI chatbots are effective for vulnerable youth. We then held focus groups with 28 youth with multiple mental health conditions to understand their perspectives on AI chatbot use. Youth described a cautious optimism. They recognized that AI chatbots could have quite a number of practical benefits for youth with mental health conditions, but they also raised a number of concerns around confidentiality, safety, crisis support, and other key issues. Youth described that they wanted AI chatbots to be flexible and customizable, with strong confidentiality and safety protocols, reliable content, and a human-like communication style. This work led to a number of recommendations for intervention developers and researchers to guide the future development and testing of AI chatbots for youth mental health.
Manuscripts:
This paper reviews the recent literature on AI chatbots for the mental health of service-seeking youth:
This paper presents youth perspectives on the acceptability and use of AI chatbots for the mental health of youth with multiple mental health conditions:
This paper describes youths’ preferences for the design features that an AI chatbot for youth mental health should have:
This paper synthesizes the program of research and proposes recommendations to guide researchers and intervention developers in the youth mental health AI chatbot space.