Enhancing Psychological Resilience with Chatbot-Based Cognitive Behavior Therapy: A Randomized Control Pilot Study

Depression is a common, serious, and potentially lethal mental disorder. Using a chatbot to assist people with learning skills to build psychological resilience against adverse life events is a promising research direction, which however, has received little attention in literature. The purpose of this study is to verify the effectiveness and usability of chatbot-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). One-hundred and seven participants were recruited on social media and randomly divided into a chatbot group (n=52) and a control group (n=55). A self-developing chatbot, Philobot, guided all participants in the chatbot group through CBT in a four-day session, while the participants in the control group were asked to read CBT-based books. The results showed that chatbot-based CBT could significantly improve mental resilience (t=2.43, p<0.05). However, the difference between the chatbot and control group did not reach statistical significance.