The Role of AI Chatbots in Mental Health Related Public Services in a (Post)Pandemic World: A Review and Future Research Agenda

The purpose of this paper is to explore the advances in artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots as part of public services, mainly when applied to mental health in today’s post-pandemic world. The adoption of AI chatbots to keep up with basic customer support business activities is based on extensive knowledge, both from the hard (software development) and the soft side (increasing the added value to the service/product). However, using chatbots as extenders of public services to support mental health in pandemic times is an emerging research topic. Hence, the paper identifies niche and under-explored research gaps in state-of-the-art literature, thus contributing to the body of academic knowledge. The paper adopts a design science approach to formulate the problem statement, articulate the objectives of target solutions, and propose a design and development framework for future mental health chatbots by employing an extensive literature review. Findings from this paper emphasize considerations of ethical issues and governance, purposeful and goal-oriented design, and AI-based technology as critical enablers for designing new mental health chatbots. The paper contributes to the knowledge by providing clear and structured future research priorities and offers a framework for designing more effective and intelligent mental health chatbots that public organizations and managers may find useful.