VCounselor: A Psychological Intervention Chat Agent Based on a Knowledge-Enhanced Large Language Model (2403.13553v1)

Abstract: Conversational artificial intelligence can already independently engage in brief conversations with clients with psychological problems and provide evidence-based psychological interventions. The main objective of this study is to improve the effectiveness and credibility of the LLM in psychological intervention by creating a specialized agent, the VCounselor, to address the limitations observed in popular LLMs such as ChatGPT in domain applications. We achieved this goal by proposing a new affective interaction structure and knowledge-enhancement structure. In order to evaluate VCounselor, this study compared the general LLM, the fine-tuned LLM, and VCounselor's knowledge-enhanced LLM. At the same time, the general LLM and the fine-tuned LLM will also be provided with an avatar to compare them as an agent with VCounselor. The comparison results indicated that the affective interaction structure and knowledge-enhancement structure of VCounselor significantly improved the effectiveness and credibility of the psychological intervention, and VCounselor significantly provided positive tendencies for clients' emotions. The conclusion of this study strongly supports that VConselor has a significant advantage in providing psychological support to clients by being able to analyze the patient's problems with relative accuracy and provide professional-level advice that enhances support for clients.