Young People Aged 18-25 With Depression or Anxiety Mood Participate in an LLM-based Digital Dialogue Intervention Study

Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Status: Completed

Conditions: LLM-based AI Dialogue Bot; Depression; Anxiety

Treatments: Other: Douyin Xinqing AI dialog bot for delayed intervention; Other: Douyin Xinqing AI dialog bot

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06346496

H23133

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study is a 28-day randomized controlled trial (RCT). Residents were randomly assigned to an intervention group or a waiting group according to the order in which they were successfully contacted by the staff, and each user was asked to engage in a total of 28 days of dialog intervention with the Douyin companion bot and complete three psychological questionnaires (on Days 1, 14, and 28); however, the intervention group began to receive the dialog intervention after completing the first questionnaire, and the waiting group began to receive the dialog intervention after completing the third questionnaire. During the first four weeks, the waiting group was treated as a blank control. The two groups of subjects completed the three questionnaires at exactly the same point in time. Each user's depression, anxiety, and positive and negative emotions were measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), respectively.

Enrollment: 657 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 25 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• 18-25 years old
• Proficient in Chinese
• Not dyslexic
• Scoring at least 5 on the PHQ-9 or GAD-7
• Not having a serious physical or diagnosed mental illness

Exclusion criteria

• Unwilling to continue to participate in the study
• Insufficient clocking in

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

---

657 participants in 2 patient groups

AI conversation intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Participants in the intervention group received a 28-day AI conversation intervention after completing the baseline questionnaire. We asked users in the intervention group to use the web link every day, upload the start and end times of their conversations with the AI bot and screenshots of their chats; users who chatted for more than 5 minutes were considered to have successfully punched in for that day. Participants who clocked more than 8 days in the first 14 days were allowed to complete the second questionnaire at the two-week mark. Similarly, participants who quit more than eight times between days 15 and 28 could complete the third questionnaire at the four-week mark. Therefore, all users in the intervention group who completed the third questionnaire received at least 16 AI conversation interventions.

Treatment:

Other: Douyin Xinqing AI dialog bot

Waiting group

Other group

Description:

The waiting group received the same intervention as the intervention group after a 28-day waiting period.

Treatment:

Other: Douyin Xinqing AI dialog bot for delayed intervention