Promotion of continuous use of a self-guided mental healthcare system by a chatbot

Abstract

A stress check for early detection and caring of mental health issues of company employees has been legislated in Japan. However, the employees who get counseling are very limited compared to those who are recommended to. As the government tries to promote self-care of the issue, and there are applications for mental well-being on the market, such applications often face with the issue of continuous use. In this paper, we presented a self-guided mental healthcare system that includes a chatbot, and compared it with a non-chatbot version in a two-week study. We found the system was effective on continuous use and on stress reduction.