The DOI matches its Crossref record; 50 of the 52 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Relational Agents in Clinical Psychiatry
Abstract
Relational agents are computational artifacts, such as animated, screen-based characters or social robots, that are designed to establish a sense of rapport, trust, and even therapeutic alliance with patients, using ideal therapeutic relationships between human counselors and patients as role models. We describe the development and evaluation of several such agents designed for health counseling and behavioral-change interventions, in which a therapeutic alliance is established with patients in order to enhance the efficacy of the intervention. We also discuss the promise of using such agents as adjuncts to clinical psychiatry, a range of possible applications, and some of the challenges and ethical issues in developing and fielding them in psychiatric interventions.
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In the citing paper
“Third, relational agents (RAs), which can mimic human healthcare professionals' behavior, could be built based on affective computing.”
From Digital Therapeutic Alliance With Fully Automated Mental Health Smartphone Apps: A Narrative Review (2022) · cites this paper as [66]
In the citing paper
“Bickmore and Gruber (66) further argued that RAs can build long-term relationships with clients when using certain design strategies, such as variability and self-disclosure.”
From Digital Therapeutic Alliance With Fully Automated Mental Health Smartphone Apps: A Narrative Review (2022) · cites this paper as Bickmore and Gruber (66)
In the citing paper
“Recent existing reviews have focused exclusively on a subset of embodied conversational agent interventions despite other modalities aiming to achieve the common goal of improved mental health.”
From Conversational agents in the treatment of mental health problems: mixed-method systematic review (2019) · cites this paper as [7]
Citations
Cites
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Horvath, A. O., & Greenberg, L. S. (1989) · Journal of Counseling Psychology · doi:10.1037//0022-0167.36.2.223 · Cited by 3,520
ELIZA — a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine
Weizenbaum, J. (1983) · Communications of the ACM · doi:10.1145/357980.357991 · Cited by 2,807
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Miller, W., & Rollnick, S. (2003) · Journal For Healthcare Quality · doi:10.1097/01445442-200305000-00013 · Cited by 2,634
Embodied Conversational Agents
(2000) · The MIT Press eBooks · doi:10.7551/mitpress/2697.001.0001 · Cited by 1,829
Lacro, J. P., Dunn, L. B., Dolder, C. R., Leckband, S. G., & Jeste, D. V. (2002) · The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry · doi:10.4088/jcp.v63n1007 · Cited by 1,383
Interventions to Enhance Medication Adherence in Chronic Medical Conditions: A Systematic Review
Kripalani, S., Yao, X., & Haynes, R. B. (2007) · Archives of Internal Medicine · doi:10.1001/archinte.167.6.540 · Cited by 810
BEAT: the Behavior Expression Animation Toolkit
Cassell, J., Vilhjálmsson, H. H., & Bickmore, T. (2001) · Proceedings of the 28th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques · doi:10.1145/383259.383315 · Cited by 739
Self-citationThis computer responds to user frustration:
Klein, J., Moon, Y., & Picard, R. W. (2002) · Interacting with Computers · doi:10.1016/s0953-5438(01)00053-4 · Cited by 560
Research works printed but not linked: 1
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Chatbots and Conversational Agents in Mental Health: A Review of the Psychiatric Landscape
Vaidyam, A. N., Wisniewski, H., Halamka, J. D., Kashavan, M. S., & Torous, J. B. (2019) · The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1177/0706743719828977 · Cited by 1,048
A Taxonomy of Social Cues for Conversational Agents
Feine, J., Gnewuch, U., Morana, S., & Maedche, A. (2019) · International Journal of Human-Computer Studies · doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.07.009 · Cited by 586
Embodied conversational agents in clinical psychology: a scoping review
Provoost, S., Lau, H. M., Ruwaard, J., & Riper, H. (2017) · Journal of Medical Internet Research · doi:10.2196/jmir.6553 · Cited by 433
Natural language processing in mental health applications using non-clinical texts
Calvo, R. A., Milne, D., Hussain, M. S., & Christensen, H. M. (2017) · Natural Language Engineering · doi:10.1017/s1351324916000383 · Cited by 405
“Maintaining engagement with any behavior change tool is challenging, even more so with agents that are expected to be used for a semester, a year or a whole life (Bickmore and Gruber 2010; Bickmore, Schulman and Yin 2010).”
BackgroundInfluentialConversational agents in the treatment of mental health problems: mixed-method systematic review
Gaffney, H., Mansell, W., & Tai, S. (2019) · JMIR Mental Health · doi:10.2196/14166 · Cited by 275
“Evidence has begun to accumulate around the potential benefits of conversational agents in diverse fields [5] within health and medical care [6] and specifically in mental health [7-11].”
Metadata
- Authors
- Bickmore, T., & Gruber, A.
- Affiliations
- Northeastern University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Bickmore, Timothy
- ORCID
- Bickmore, Timothy
- Venue
- Harvard Review of Psychiatry
- Published
- 2010-03
- Volume
- 18
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 119-130
- ISSN
- 1067-3229 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2149556084
- Cited by
- 112
- References
- 52
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 5.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Harvard Review of Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Digital Mental Health Interventions
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications
- Keywords
- relational agents, social robots, therapeutic relationship, health counseling, behaviour change interventions, clinical psychiatry, rapport building, trust, ethical considerations
- MeSH terms
- Counseling, Humans, Psychiatry, Internet
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