Setting Physical Activity Goals with a Virtual Coach: Vicarious Experiences, Personalization and Acceptance.

Goal-setting is often used in eHealth applications for behavior change as it motivates and helps to stay focused on a desired outcome. However, for goals to be effective, they need to meet criteria such as being specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (SMART). Moreover, people need to be confident to reach their goal. We thus created a goal-setting dialog in which the virtual coach Jody guided people in setting SMART goals. Thereby, Jody provided personalized vicarious experiences by showing examples from other people who reached a goal to increase people's confidence. These experiences were personalized, as it is helpful to observe a relatable other succeed. Data from an online study with a between-subjects with pre-post measurement design (n=39 participants) provide credible support that personalized experiences are seen as more motivating than generic ones. Motivational factors for participants included information about the goal, path to the goal, and the person who accomplished a goal, as well as the mere fact that a goal was reached. Participants also had a positive attitude toward Jody. We see these results as an indication that people are positive toward using a goal-setting dialog with a virtual coach in eHealth applications for behavior change. Moreover, contrary to hypothesized, our observed data give credible support that participants' self-efficacy was lower after the dialog than before. These results warrant further research on how such dialogs affect self-efficacy, especially whether these lower post-measurements of self-efficacy are associated with people's more realistic assessment of their abilities.

Content-Based Recommender Support System for Counselors in a Suicide Prevention Chat Helpline: Design and Evaluation Study.

BACKGROUND: The working environment of a suicide prevention helpline requires high emotional and cognitive awareness from chat counselors. A shared opinion among counselors is that as a chat conversation becomes more difficult, it takes more effort and a longer amount of time to compose a response, which, in turn, can lead to writer's block. OBJECTIVE: This study evaluates and then designs supportive technology to determine if a support system that provides inspiration can help counselors resolve writer's block when they encounter difficult situations in chats with help-seekers. METHODS: A content-based recommender system with sentence embedding was used to search a chat corpus for similar chat situations. The system showed a counselor the most similar parts of former chat conversations so that the counselor would be able to use approaches previously taken by their colleagues as inspiration. In a within-subject experiment, counselors' chat replies when confronted with a difficult situation were analyzed to determine if experts could see a noticeable difference in chat replies that were obtained in 3 conditions: (1) with the help of the support system, (2) with written advice from a senior counselor, or (3) when receiving no help. In addition, the system's utility and usability were measured, and the validity of the algorithm was examined. RESULTS: A total of 24 counselors used a prototype of the support system; the results showed that, by reading chat replies, experts were able to significantly predict if counselors had received help from the support system or from a senior counselor (P=.004). Counselors scored the information they received from a senior counselor (M=1.46, SD 1.91) as significantly more helpful than the information received from the support system or when no help was given at all (M=-0.21, SD 2.26). Finally, compared with randomly selected former chat conversations, counselors rated the ones identified by the content-based recommendation system as significantly more similar to their current chats (ß=.30, P<.001). CONCLUSIONS: Support given to counselors influenced how they responded in difficult conversations. However, the higher utility scores given for the advice from senior counselors seem to indicate that specific actionable instructions are preferred. We expect that these findings will be beneficial for developing a system that can use similar chat situations to generate advice in a descriptive style, hence helping counselors through writer's block.

Factors Affecting User's Behavioral Intention and Use of a Mobile-Phone-Delivered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia: A Small-Scale UTAUT Analysis.

A mobile app could be a powerful medium for providing individual support for cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), as well as facilitating therapy adherence. Little is known about factors that may explain the acceptance and uptake of such applications. This study, therefore, examines factors from an extended version of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) model to explain variation between people's behavioral intention to use a CBT for insomnia (CBT-I) app and their use-behavior. The model includes eight aspects of behavioral intention: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, self-efficacy, trust, hedonic motivation, anxiety, and facilitating conditions, and investigates further the influence of the behavioral intention and facilitating conditions on app-usage behavior. Data were gathered from a field trial involving people (n = 89) with relatively mild insomnia using a CBT-I app. The analysis applied the Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling method. The results found that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, self-efficacy, trust, and facilitating conditions all explained part of the variation in behavioral intention, but not beyond the explanation provided by hedonic motivation, which accounted for R2 = 0.61. Both behavioral intention and facilitating conditions could explain the use-behavior (R2 = 0.32). We anticipate that the findings will help researchers and developers to focus on: (1) users' positive feelings about the app as this was an indicator of their acceptance of the mobile app and usage; and (2) the availability of resources and support as this also correlated with the technology use.

Technological State of the Art of Electronic Mental Health Interventions for Major Depressive Disorder: Systematic Literature Review.

BACKGROUND: Electronic mental (e-mental) health care for depression aims to overcome barriers to and limitations of face-to-face treatment. Owing to the high and growing demand for mental health care, a large number of such information and communication technology systems have been developed in recent years. Consequently, a diverse system landscape formed. OBJECTIVE: This literature review aims to give an overview of this landscape of e-mental health systems for the prevention and treatment of major depressive disorder, focusing on three main research questions: (1) What types of systems exist? (2) How technologically advanced are these systems? (3) How has the system landscape evolved between 2000 and 2017? METHODS: Publications eligible for inclusion described e-mental health software for the prevention or treatment of major depressive disorder. Additionally, the software had to have been evaluated with end users and developed since 2000. After screening, 270 records remained for inclusion. We constructed a taxonomy concerning software systems, their functions, how technologized these were in their realization, and how systems were evaluated, and then, we extracted this information from the included records. We define here as functions any component of the system that delivers either treatment or adherence support to the user. For this coding process, an elaborate classification hierarchy for functions was developed yielding a total of 133 systems with 2163 functions. The systems and their functions were analyzed quantitatively, with a focus on technological realization. RESULTS: There are various types of systems. However, most are delivered on the World Wide Web (76%), and most implement cognitive behavioral therapy techniques (85%). In terms of content, systems contain twice as many treatment functions as adherence support functions, on average. Furthermore, autonomous systems, those not including human guidance, are equally as technologized and have one-third less functions than guided ones. Therefore, lack of guidance is neither compensated with additional functions nor compensated by technologizing functions to a greater degree. Although several high-tech solutions could be found, the average system falls between a purely informational system and one that allows for data entry but without automatically processing these data. Moreover, no clear increase in the technological capabilities of systems showed in the field, between 2000 and 2017, despite a marked growth in system quantity. Finally, more sophisticated systems were evaluated less often in comparative trials than less sophisticated ones (OR 0.59). CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that when developers create systems, there is a greater focus on implementing therapeutic treatment than adherence support. Although the field is very active, as evidenced by the growing number of systems developed per year, the technological possibilities explored are limited. In addition to allowing developers to compare their system with others, we anticipate that this review will help researchers identify opportunities in the field.

Design and Evaluation of Personalized Motivational Messages by a Virtual Agent that Assists in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Therapy.

BACKGROUND: Systems incorporating virtual agents can play a major role in electronic-mental (e-mental) health care, as barriers to care still prevent some patients from receiving the help they need. To properly assist the users of these systems, a virtual agent needs to promote motivation. This can be done by offering motivational messages. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was two-fold. The first was to build a motivational message system for a virtual agent assisting in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) therapy based on domain knowledge from experts. The second was to test the hypotheses that (1) computer-generated motivating messages influence users' motivation to continue with therapy, trust in a good therapy outcome, and the feeling of being heard by the agent and (2) personalized messages outperform generic messages on these factors. METHODS: A system capable of generating motivational messages was built by analyzing expert (N=13) knowledge on what types of motivational statements to use in what situation. To test the 2 hypotheses, a Web-based study was performed (N=207). Participants were asked to imagine they were in a certain situation, specified by the progression of their symptoms and initial trust in a good therapy outcome. After this, they received a message from a virtual agent containing either personalized motivation as generated by the system, general motivation, or no motivational content. They were asked how this message changed their motivation to continue and trust in a good outcome as well as how much they felt they were being heard by the agent. RESULTS: Overall, findings confirmed the first hypothesis, as well as the second hypothesis for the measure feeling of being heard by the agent. Personalization of the messages was also shown to be important in those situations where the symptoms were getting worse. In these situations, personalized messages outperformed general messages both in terms of motivation to continue and trust in a good therapy outcome. CONCLUSIONS: Expert input can successfully be used to develop a personalized motivational message system. Messages generated by such a system seem to improve people's motivation and trust in PTSD therapy as well as the user's feeling of being heard by a virtual agent. Given the importance of motivation, trust, and therapeutic alliance for successful therapy, we anticipate that the proposed system can improve adherence in e-mental therapy for PTSD and that it can provide a blueprint for the development of an adaptive system for persuasive messages based on expert input.

Considering patient safety in autonomous e-mental health systems - detecting risk situations and referring patients back to human care.

BACKGROUND: Digital health interventions can fill gaps in mental healthcare provision. However, autonomous e-mental health (AEMH) systems also present challenges for effective risk management. To balance autonomy and safety, AEMH systems need to detect risk situations and act on these appropriately. One option is sending automatic alerts to carers, but such 'auto-referral' could lead to missed cases or false alerts. Requiring users to actively self-refer offers an alternative, but this can also be risky as it relies on their motivation to do so. This study set out with two objectives. Firstly, to develop guidelines for risk detection and auto-referral systems. Secondly, to understand how persuasive techniques, mediated by a virtual agent, can facilitate self-referral. METHODS: In a formative phase, interviews with experts, alongside a literature review, were used to develop a risk detection protocol. Two referral protocols were developed - one involving auto-referral, the other motivating users to self-refer. This latter was tested via crowd-sourcing (n = 160). Participants were asked to imagine they had sleeping problems with differing severity and user stance on seeking help. They then chatted with a virtual agent, who either directly facilitated referral, tried to persuade the user, or accepted that they did not want help. After the conversation, participants rated their intention to self-refer, to chat with the agent again, and their feeling of being heard by the agent. RESULTS: Whether the virtual agent facilitated, persuaded or accepted, influenced all of these measures. Users who were initially negative or doubtful about self-referral could be persuaded. For users who were initially positive about seeking human care, this persuasion did not affect their intentions, indicating that a simply facilitating referral without persuasion was sufficient. CONCLUSION: This paper presents a protocol that elucidates the steps and decisions involved in risk detection, something that is relevant for all types of AEMH systems. In the case of self-referral, our study shows that a virtual agent can increase users' intention to self-refer. Moreover, the strategy of the agent influenced the intentions of the user afterwards. This highlights the importance of a personalised approach to promote the user's access to appropriate care.

Self-Monitoring Kidney Function Post Transplantation: Reliability of Patient-Reported Data.

BACKGROUND: The high frequency of outpatient visits after kidney transplantation is burdensome to both the recovering patient and health care capacity. Self-monitoring kidney function offers a promising strategy to reduce the number of these outpatient visits. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to investigate whether it is safe to rely on patients' self-measurements of creatinine and blood pressure, using data from a self-management randomized controlled trial. METHODS: For self-monitoring creatinine, each participant received a StatSensor Xpress-i Creatinine Meter and related test material. For self-monitoring blood pressure, each participant received a Microlife WatchBP Home, an oscillometric device for blood pressure self-measurement on the upper arm. Both devices had a memory function and the option to download stored values to a computer. During the first year post transplantation, 54 patients registered their self-measured creatinine values in a Web-based Self-Management Support System (SMSS) which provided automatic feedback on the registered values (eg, seek contact with hospital). Values registered in the SMSS were compared with those logged automatically in the creatinine device to study reliability of registered data. Adherence to measurement frequency was determined by comparing the number of requested with the number of performed measurements. To study adherence to provided feedback, SMSS-logged feedback and information from the electronic hospital files were analyzed. RESULTS: Level of adherence was highest during months 2-4 post transplantation with over 90% (42/47) of patients performing at least 75% of the requested measurements. Overall, 87.00% (3448/3963) of all registered creatinine values were entered correctly, although values were often registered several days later. If (the number of) measured and registered values deviated, the mean of registered creatinine values was significantly lower than what was measured, suggesting active selection of lower creatinine values. Adherence to SMSS feedback ranged from 53% (14/24) to 85% (33/39), depending on the specific feedback. CONCLUSIONS: Patients' tendency to postpone registration and to select lower creatinine values for registration and the suboptimal adherence to the feedback provided by the SMSS might challenge safety. This should be well considered when designing self-monitoring care systems, for example by ensuring that self-measured data are transferred automatically to an SMSS.

Mobile Phone-Delivered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia: A Randomized Waitlist Controlled Trial.

BACKGROUND: This study is one of the first randomized controlled trials investigating cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) delivered by a fully automated mobile phone app. Such an app can potentially increase the accessibility of insomnia treatment for the 10% of people who have insomnia. OBJECTIVE: The objective of our study was to investigate the efficacy of CBT-I delivered via the Sleepcare mobile phone app, compared with a waitlist control group, in a randomized controlled trial. METHODS: We recruited participants in the Netherlands with relatively mild insomnia disorder. After answering an online pretest questionnaire, they were randomly assigned to the app (n=74) or the waitlist condition (n=77). The app packaged a sleep diary, a relaxation exercise, sleep restriction exercise, and sleep hygiene and education. The app was fully automated and adjusted itself to a participant's progress. Program duration was 6 to 7 weeks, after which participants received posttest measurements and a 3-month follow-up. The participants in the waitlist condition received the app after they completed the posttest questionnaire. The measurements consisted of questionnaires and 7-day online diaries. The questionnaires measured insomnia severity, dysfunctional beliefs about sleep, and anxiety and depression symptoms. The diary measured sleep variables such as sleep efficiency. We performed multilevel analyses to study the interaction effects between time and condition. RESULTS: The results showed significant interaction effects (P<.01) favoring the app condition on the primary outcome measures of insomnia severity (d=-0.66) and sleep efficiency (d=0.71). Overall, these improvements were also retained in a 3-month follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated the efficacy of a fully automated mobile phone app in the treatment of relatively mild insomnia. The effects were in the range of what is found for Web-based treatment in general. This supports the applicability of such technical tools in the treatment of insomnia. Future work should examine the generalizability to a more diverse population. Furthermore, the separate components of such an app should be investigated. It remains to be seen how this app can best be integrated into the current health regimens. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Netherlands Trial Register: NTR5560; http://www.trialregister.nl/trialreg/admin/rctview.asp?TC=5560 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6noLaUdJ4).

Renal transplant patient acceptance of a self-management support system.

BACKGROUND: Self-management support systems (SMSS) have been proposed for renal transplant patients to increase their autonomy and reduce the number of hospital visits. For the design and implementation of such systems, it is important to understand factors influencing patients' acceptance of a SMSS. This paper aims to identify these key factors. METHODS: From literature, possible factors and related questionnaire items were identified. Afterwards, focus groups with experts and patients were conducted to adapt the items to the application domain. To investigate acceptance of a SMSS and the influencing factors, fifty renal transplant patients answered the questionnaire before and after using the SMSS for 4 months. RESULTS: All the questionnaire constructs had a satisfactory or higher level of reliability. After using the SMSS for 4 months, trust and performance expectancy could explain part of the variation in behavioural intention of using the SMSS, but not beyond the explanation given by patients' affect towards the system, which accounted for 26% of the variance. CONCLUSIONS: We anticipate that in future caregivers implementing a SMSS will benefit from taking steps to improve patients' affect as this was found to correlate with patients use intention. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study was registered in ToetsingOnline, a registry held by the Dutch Central Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects. The registration number is NL33387.058.11 , and the date of registration is 31st July 2012.

A Therapy System for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Using a Virtual Agent and Virtual Storytelling to Reconstruct Traumatic Memories.

Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is well treatable, many people do not get the desired treatment due to barriers to care (such as stigma and cost). This paper presents a system that bridges this gap by enabling patients to follow therapy at home. A therapist is only involved remotely, to monitor progress and serve as a safety net. With this system, patients can recollect their memories in a digital diary and recreate them in a 3D WorldBuilder. Throughout the therapy, a virtual agent is present to inform and guide patients through the sessions, employing an ontology-based question module for recollecting traumatic memories to further elicit a detailed memory recollection. In a usability study with former PTSD patients (n = 4), these questions were found useful for memory recollection. Moreover, the usability of the whole system was rated positively. This system has the potential to be a valuable addition to the spectrum of PTSD treatments, offering a novel type of home therapy assisted by a virtual agent.

Adherence to Technology-Mediated Insomnia Treatment: A Meta-Analysis, Interviews, and Focus Groups.

BACKGROUND: Several technologies have been proposed to support the reduction of insomnia complaints. A user-centered assessment of these technologies could provide insight into underlying factors related to treatment adherence. OBJECTIVE: Gaining insight into adherence to technology-mediated insomnia treatment as a solid base for improving those adherence rates by applying adherence-enhancing strategies. METHODS: Adherence to technology-mediated sleep products was studied in three ways. First, a meta-analysis was performed to investigate adherence rates in technology-mediated insomnia therapy. Several databases were queried for technology-mediated insomnia treatments. After inclusion and exclusion steps, data from 18 studies were retrieved and aggregated to find an average adherence rate. Next, 15 semistructured interviews about sleep-support technologies were conducted to investigate perceived adherence. Lastly, several scenarios were written about the usage of a virtual sleep coach that could support adherence rates. The scenarios were discussed in six different focus groups consisting of potential users (n=15), sleep experts (n=7), and coaches (n=9). RESULTS: From the meta-analysis, average treatment adherence appeared to be approximately 52% (95% CI 43%-61%) for technology-mediated insomnia treatments. This means that, on average, half of the treatment exercises were not executed, suggesting there is a substantial need for adherence and room for improvement in this area. However, the users in the interviews believed they adhered quite well to their sleep products. Users mentioned relying on personal commitment (ie, willpower) for therapy adherence. Participants of the focus groups reconfirmed their belief in the effectiveness of personal commitment, which they regarded as more effective than adherence-enhancing strategies. CONCLUSIONS: Although adherence rates for insomnia interventions indicate extensive room for improvement, users might not consider adherence to be a problem; they believe willpower to be an effective adherence strategy. A virtual coach should be able to cope with this "adherence bias" and persuade users to accept adherence-enhancing strategies, such as reminders, compliments, and community building.

Human Participants in Engineering Research: Notes from a Fledgling Ethics Committee.

For the past half-century, issues relating to the ethical conduct of human research have focused largely on the domain of medical, and more recently social-psychological research. The modern regime of applied ethics, emerging as it has from the Nuremberg trials and certain other historical antecedents, applies the key principles of: autonomy, respect for persons, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice to human beings who enter trials of experimental drugs and devices (Martensen in J Hist Med Allied Sci 56(2):168-175, 2001). Institutions such as Institutional Review Boards (in the U.S.) and Ethics Committees (in Europe and elsewhere) oversee most governmentally-funded medical research around the world, in more than a hundred nations that are signers of the Declaration of Helsinki (World Medical Association 2008). Increasingly, research outside of medicine has been recognized to pose potential risks to human subjects of experiments. Ethics committees now operate in the US, Canada, the U.K. and Australia to oversee all governmental-funded research, and in other jurisdictions, the range of research covered by such committees is expanding. Social science, anthropology, and other fields are falling under more clear directives to conduct a formal ethical review for basic research involving human participants (Federman et al. in Responsible research: a systems approach to protecting research participants. National Academies Press, Washington, 2003, p. 36). The legal and institutional response for protecting human subjects in the course of developing non-medical technologies, engineering, and design is currently vague, but some universities are establishing ethics committees to oversee their human subjects research even where the experiments involved are non-medical and not technically covered by the Declaration of Helsinki. In The Netherlands, as in most of Europe, Asia, Latin America, or Africa, no laws mandate an ethical review of non-medical research. Yet, nearly 2 years ago we launched a pilot ethics committee at our technical university and began soliciting our colleagues to submit their studies for review. In the past year, we have become officially recognized as a human subjects ethics committee for our university and we are beginning the process of requiring all studies using human subjects to apply for our approval. In this article, we consider some of the special problems relating to protecting human participants in a technology context, and discuss some of our experiences and insights about reviewing human subjects research at a technical university, concluding: that not less than in medical studies, human participants used in technology research benefit from ethical committees' reviews, practical requirements for publications, grants, and avoiding legal liability are also served by such committees, and ethics committees in such contexts have many similarities to, but certain other special foci than medical ethics committees. We believe that this experience, and these observations, are helpful for those seeking to establish such committees in technology research contexts, and for framing the particular issues that may arise in such contexts for the benefit of researchers, and nascent committees seeking to establish their own procedures.

Reducing social diabetes distress with a conversational agent support system: a three-week technology feasibility evaluation.

Background: People with diabetes mellitus not only have to deal with physical health problems, but also with the psycho-social challenges their chronic disease brings. Currently, technological tools that support the psycho-social context of a patient have received little attention. Objective: The objective of this work is to determine the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of an automated conversational agent to deliver, to people with diabetes, personalised psycho-education on dealing with (psycho-)social distress related to their chronic illness. Methods: In a double-blinded between-subject study, 156 crowd-workers with diabetes received a social help program intervention in three sessions over three weeks. They were randomly assigned to receive support from either an interactive conversational support agent (n=79) or a self-help text from the book "Diabetes burnout" as a control condition (n=77). Participants completed the Diabetes Distress Scale (DDS) before and after the intervention, and after the intervention, the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ-8), Feeling of Being Heard (FBH), and System Usability Scale (SUS). Results: Results indicate that people using the conversational agent have a larger reduction in diabetes distress (M=-0.305, SD=0.865) than the control group (M=0.002, SD=0.743) and this difference is statistically significant (t(154)=2.377, p=0.019). A hypothesised mediation effect of "attitude to the social help program" was not observed. Conclusions: An automated conversational agent can deliver personalised psycho-education on dealing with (psycho-)social distress to people with diabetes and reduce diabetes distress more than a self-help book. Ethics Study Registration and Open Science: This study has been preregistered with the Open Science Foundation (osf.io/yb6vg) and has been accepted by the Human Research Ethics Committee - Delft University of Technology under application number 1130. The data and analysis script are available: https://surfdrive.surf.nl/files/index.php/s/4xSEHCrAu0HsJ4P.

Feasibility of generating structured motivational messages for tailored physical activity coaching.

Tailored motivational messages are helpful to motivate people in eHealth applications for increasing physical activity, but it is not sufficiently clear how such messages can be effectively generated in advance. We, therefore, put forward a theory-driven approach to generating tailored motivational messages for eHealth applications for behavior change, and we examine its feasibility by assessing how motivating the resulting messages are perceived. For this, we designed motivational messages with a specific structure that was based on an adaptation of an existing ontology for tailoring motivational messages in the context of physical activity. To obtain tailored messages, experts in health psychology and coaching successfully wrote messages with this structure for personas in scenarios that differed with regard to the persona's mood, self-efficacy, and progress. Based on an experiment in which 60 participants each rated the perceived motivational impact of six generic and six tailored messages based on scenarios, we found credible support for our hypothesis that messages tailored to mood, self-efficacy, and progress are perceived as more motivating. A thematic analysis of people's free-text responses about what they found motivating and demotivating about motivational messages further supports the use of tailored messages, as well as messages that are encouraging and empathetic, give feedback about people's progress, and mention the benefits of physical activity. To aid future work on motivational messages, we make our motivational messages and corresponding scenarios publicly available.

Breaking Down Barriers to a Suicide Prevention Helpline: Protocol for a Web-Based Randomized Controlled Trial.

BACKGROUND: Globally, suicide is among the leading causes of death, with men being more at risk to die from suicide than women. Research suggests that people with suicidal ideation often struggle to find adequate help. Every month, around 4000 people fill in the anonymous self-test for suicidal thoughts on the website of the Dutch suicide prevention helpline. This self-test includes the Suicidal Ideation Attributes Scale (SIDAS), which educates users about the severity of their suicidal thoughts. The vast majority (70%) of people who complete the self-test score higher than the cutoff point (≥21) for severe suicidal thoughts. Unfortunately, despite this, less than 10% of test-takers navigate to the web page about contacting the helpline. OBJECTIVE: This protocol presents the design of a web-based randomized controlled trial that aims to reduce barriers to contacting the suicide prevention helpline. The aim of this study is 2-fold: (1) to measure the effectiveness of a brief barrier reduction intervention (BRI) provided in the self-test motivating people with severe suicidal thoughts to contact the Dutch suicide prevention helpline and (2) to specifically evaluate the effectiveness of the BRI in increasing service use by high-risk groups for suicide such as men and middle-aged people. METHODS: People visiting the self-test for suicidal thoughts on the website of the suicide prevention helpline will be asked to participate in a study to improve the self-test. Individuals with severe suicidal thoughts and little motivation to contact the helpline will be randomly allocated either to a brief BRI, in which they will receive a short tailored message based on their self-reported barrier to the helpline (n=388) or care as usual (general advisory text, n=388). The primary outcome measure is the use of a direct link to contact the helpline after receiving the intervention or control condition. Secondary outcomes are the self-reported likelihood of contacting the helpline (on a 5-point scale) and satisfaction with the self-test. In the BRI, participants receive tailored information to address underlying concerns and misconceptions of barriers to the helpline. A pilot study was conducted among current test-takers to identify these specific barriers. RESULTS: The pilot study (N=1083) revealed multiple barriers to contacting the helpline. The most prominent were the belief that a conversation with a counselor would not be effective, fear of the conversation itself, and emotional concerns about talking about suicidal thoughts. CONCLUSIONS: Our study will provide insight into the effectiveness of a brief BRI designed to increase the use of a suicide prevention helpline provided in a self-test on suicidal thoughts. If successful, this intervention has the potential to be a low-cost, easily scalable, and feasible method to increase service use for helplines across the world. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05458830; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05458830. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/41078.

Lessons learned from the development of technological support for PTSD prevention: a review.

This review describes the state-of-the-art technologies that support mental resilience training for PTSD prevention. It characterizes four current systems across training approaches; seeks insights via interviews with the system developers; and extracts from these a set of essential guidelines for future developers. The guidelines include four distinct project-limiting factors, which were found to constrain the reviewed developments. These were Culture, Effectiveness, Engineering, and Resource constraints.This research is novel in reviewing technologies for PTSD prevention as opposed to treatment, and in analyzing from the perspective of system development and design issues.

Automatic mechanisms for measuring subjective unit of discomfort.

Current practice in Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) is that therapists ask patients about their anxiety level by means of the Subjective Unit of Discomfort (SUD) scale. With an aim of developing a home-based VRET system, this measurement ideally should be done using speech technology. In a VRET system for social phobia with scripted avatar-patient dialogues, the timing of asking patients to give their SUD score becomes relevant. This study examined three timing mechanisms: (1) dialogue dependent (i.e. naturally in the flow of the dialogue); (2) speech dependent (i.e. when both patient and avatar are silent); and (3) context independent (i.e. randomly). Results of an experiment with non-patients (n = 24) showed a significant effect for the timing mechanisms on the perceived dialogue flow, user preference, reported presence and user dialog replies. Overall, dialogue dependent timing mechanism seems superior followed by the speech dependent and context independent timing mechanism.

Using a conversational agent for thought recording as a cognitive therapy task: Feasibility, content, and feedback.

E-mental health for depression is increasingly used in clinical practice, but patient adherence suffers as therapist involvement decreases. One reason may be the low responsiveness of existing programs: especially autonomous systems are lacking in their input interpretation and feedback-giving capabilities. Here, we explore (a) to what extent a more socially intelligent and, therefore, technologically advanced solution, namely a conversational agent, is a feasible means of collecting thought record data in dialog, (b) what people write about in their thought records, (c) whether providing content-based feedback increases motivation for thought recording, a core technique of cognitive therapy that helps patients gain an understanding of how their thoughts cause their feelings. Using the crowd-sourcing platform Prolific, 308 participants with subclinical depression symptoms were recruited and split into three conditions of varying feedback richness using the minimization method of randomization. They completed two thought recording sessions with the conversational agent: one practice session with scenarios and one open session using situations from their own lives. All participants were able to complete thought records with the agent such that the thoughts could be interpreted by the machine learning algorithm, rendering the completion of thought records with the agent feasible. Participants chose interpersonal situations nearly three times as often as achievement-related situations in the open chat session. The three most common underlying schemas were the Attachment, Competence, and Global Self-evaluation schemas. No support was found for a motivational effect of providing richer feedback. In addition to our findings, we publish the dataset of thought records for interested researchers and developers.

Addressing people's current and future states in a reinforcement learning algorithm for persuading to quit smoking and to be physically active.

Behavior change applications often assign their users activities such as tracking the number of smoked cigarettes or planning a running route. To help a user complete these activities, an application can persuade them in many ways. For example, it may help the user create a plan or mention the experience of peers. Intuitively, the application should thereby pick the message that is most likely to be motivating. In the simplest case, this could be the message that has been most effective in the past. However, one could consider several other elements in an algorithm to choose a message. Possible elements include the user's current state (e.g., self-efficacy), the user's future state after reading a message, and the user's similarity to the users on which data has been gathered. To test the added value of subsequently incorporating these elements into an algorithm that selects persuasive messages, we conducted an experiment in which more than 500 people in four conditions interacted with a text-based virtual coach. The experiment consisted of five sessions, in each of which participants were suggested a preparatory activity for quitting smoking or increasing physical activity together with a persuasive message. Our findings suggest that adding more elements to the algorithm is effective, especially in later sessions and for people who thought the activities were useful. Moreover, while we found some support for transferring knowledge between the two activity types, there was rather low agreement between the optimal policies computed separately for the two activity types. This suggests limited policy generalizability between activities for quitting smoking and those for increasing physical activity. We see our results as supporting the idea of constructing more complex persuasion algorithms. Our dataset on 2,366 persuasive messages sent to 671 people is published together with this article for researchers to build on our algorithm.

Users' needs for a digital smoking cessation application and how to address them: A mixed-methods study.

Background: Despite their increasing prevalence and potential, eHealth applications for behavior change suffer from a lack of adherence and from dropout. Advances in virtual coach technology provide new opportunities to improve this. However, these applications still do not always offer what people need. We, therefore, need a better understanding of people's needs and how to address these, based on both actual experiences of users and their reflections on envisioned scenarios. Methods: We conducted a longitudinal study in which 671 smokers interacted with a virtual coach in five sessions. The virtual coach assigned them a new preparatory activity for quitting smoking or increasing physical activity in each session. Participants provided feedback on the activity in the next session. After the five sessions, participants were asked to describe barriers and motivators for doing their activities. In addition, they provided their views on videos of scenarios such as receiving motivational messages. To understand users' needs, we took a mixed-methods approach. This approach triangulated findings from qualitative data, quantitative data, and the literature. Results: We identified 14 main themes that describe people's views of their current and future behaviors concerning an eHealth application. These themes relate to the behaviors themselves, the users, other parties involved in a behavior, and the environment. The most prevalent theme was the perceived usefulness of behaviors, especially whether they were informative, helpful, motivating, or encouraging. The timing and intensity of behaviors also mattered. With regards to the users, their perceived importance of and motivation to change, autonomy, and personal characteristics were major themes. Another important role was played by other parties that may be involved in a behavior, such as general practitioners or virtual coaches. Here, the themes of companionableness, accountability, and nature of the other party (i.e., human vs AI) were relevant. The last set of main themes was related to the environment in which a behavior is performed. Prevalent themes were the availability of sufficient time, the presence of prompts and triggers, support from one's social environment, and the diversity of other environmental factors. We provide recommendations for addressing each theme. Conclusions: The integrated method of experience-based and envisioning-based needs acquisition with a triangulate analysis provided a comprehensive needs classification (empirically and theoretically grounded). We expect that our themes and recommendations for addressing them will be helpful for designing applications for health behavior change that meet people's needs. Designers should especially focus on the perceived usefulness of application components. To aid future work, we publish our dataset with user characteristics and 5,074 free-text responses from 671 people.