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Personalizing Mental Health Chatbots for Young People

Kuhlmeier, Florian Onur ORCID iD icon 1
1 Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik (WIN), Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)

Abstract:

Depression is a prevalent mental disorder among young people, yet many affected individuals do not receive adequate support because of stigma, attitudinal barriers, and long waiting times for treatment. Mental health chatbots offer anonymous, easily accessible, and conversational support, but existing systems often fail to address young users' specific needs, the effects of different content personalization strategies remain poorly understood, and the rise of large language models (LLMs) introduces new design and evaluation challenges. This dissertation investigates how personalized mental health chatbots for young people can be designed, instantiated, and evaluated to improve user engagement and effectiveness across three complementary levels: youth-sensitive design, personalized content selection, and the personalization of therapeutic content during ongoing conversations.
The first part examines youth-specific needs through a qualitative study of young people with depression and derives design recommendations for chatbots to treat depression, highlighting the importance of age-sensitive content and personalization. The second part develops and evaluates TheraBot in two field experiments that compare standardized content with chatbot-led, user-led, and hybrid content personalization. ... mehr


Volltext §
DOI: 10.5445/IR/1000193535
Veröffentlicht am 27.05.2026
Cover der Publikation
Zugehörige Institution(en) am KIT Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik (WIN)
Publikationstyp Hochschulschrift
Publikationsdatum 27.05.2026
Sprache Englisch
Identifikator KITopen-ID: 1000193535
Verlag Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)
Umfang xiv, 219 S.
Art der Arbeit Dissertation
Fakultät Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften (WIWI)
Institut Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik (WIN)
Prüfungsdatum 25.06.2025
Relationen in KITopen
Referent/Betreuer Mädche, Alexander
Brakemeier, Eva-Lotta
KIT – Die Universität in der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft
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