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PTSDialogue: Designing a Conversational Agent to Support Individuals with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Authors:

Beth K Jaworski,

Saeed AbdullahAuthors Info & Claims

UbiComp/ISWC '21 Adjunct: Adjunct Proceedings of the 2021 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2021 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers

Pages 198 - 203

https://doi.org/10.1145/3460418.3479332

Published: 24 September 2021 Publication History

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Abstract

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious public health issue. Approximately 8 million adults in the United States suffer from PTSD in any given year, and 7–8% of the U.S. population will have PTSD at some point in their lives. Recent studies have explored eHealth technologies to support persons living with PTSD. However, current approaches are often unable to sustain adherence, leading to sub-optimal clinical outcomes. Conversational agents (CAs) can help to improve longitudinal adherence by interactively engaging users and maintaining social presence. In this work, we present prototypes of PTSDialogue — a finite-state CA to deliver evidence-based strategies and support self-management for individuals living with PTSD. We also discuss the design requirements and process of adapting existing eHealth content to interactive dialogues. Furthermore, we detail design decisions to address safety and ethical concerns to develop a CA for a vulnerable population.

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Cited By

Rashik MJasim MKucher KSarvghad AMahyar N(2024)Beyond Text and Speech in Conversational Agents: Mapping the Design Space of AvatarsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661563(1875-1894)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661563
Ross DMcCallum NTruuvert AButt ABehdinan TRojas DSoklaridis SVigod S(2024)The development and evaluation of a virtual, asynchronous, trauma-focused treatment program for adult survivors of childhood interpersonal traumaJournal of Mental Health10.1080/09638237.2024.233279733:5(566-575)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2024.2332797
Han HMendu SJaworski BOwen JAbdullah S(2023)Preliminary Evaluation of a Conversational Agent to Support Self-management of Individuals Living With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Interview Study With Clinical ExpertsJMIR Formative Research10.2196/458947(e45894)Online publication date: 29-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.2196/45894
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cover image ACM Conferences

UbiComp/ISWC '21 Adjunct: Adjunct Proceedings of the 2021 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2021 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers

September 2021

711 pages

ISBN:9781450384612

DOI:10.1145/3460418

Copyright © 2021 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 24 September 2021

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UbiComp '21: The 2021 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing

September 21 - 26, 2021

Virtual, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 764 of 2,912 submissions, 26%

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Cited By

Rashik MJasim MKucher KSarvghad AMahyar N(2024)Beyond Text and Speech in Conversational Agents: Mapping the Design Space of AvatarsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661563(1875-1894)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661563
Ross DMcCallum NTruuvert AButt ABehdinan TRojas DSoklaridis SVigod S(2024)The development and evaluation of a virtual, asynchronous, trauma-focused treatment program for adult survivors of childhood interpersonal traumaJournal of Mental Health10.1080/09638237.2024.233279733:5(566-575)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2024.2332797
Han HMendu SJaworski BOwen JAbdullah S(2023)Preliminary Evaluation of a Conversational Agent to Support Self-management of Individuals Living With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Interview Study With Clinical ExpertsJMIR Formative Research10.2196/458947(e45894)Online publication date: 29-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.2196/45894
Cho EMotalebi NSundar SAbdullah S(2022)Alexa as an Active Listener: How Backchanneling Can Elicit Self-Disclosure and Promote User ExperienceProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35551646:CSCW2(1-23)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3555164
Venkatasubramanian KRanalli T(2022)Designing Post-Trauma Self-Regulation Apps for People with Intellectual and Developmental DisabilitiesProceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3517428.3544798(1-14)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3517428.3544798

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