Mental Health Counseling

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Mental health counseling research examines how support is delivered and how counseling interactions affect clients, including in online and AI-assisted settings. AI approaches include systems grounded in cognitive behavioral therapy and motivational interviewing, retrieval from clinical knowledge, multi-agent dialogue generation, and simulated clients for counselor training. Evaluation uses expert ratings and multi-turn benchmarks to assess therapeutic skills, alliance, safety, symptom tracking, and performance with resistant or high-risk clients. A central challenge is balancing safety and structured protocol adherence with contextual judgment, cultural fit, and genuine responsiveness, while validating automated evaluations and synthetic data against expert and real-world evidence.

Latest papers

47 papers2 papers in the last four weeks, down 71% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

Language Carries the Expert's Impression: Instrument-Anchored LLM Judges Transfer Counseling-Quality Assessment and Beat In-Domain Training
Oct 6, 2026Tobias Hallmen, Elisabeth AndréMental Health Counseling Cross-Domain Transfer Learning
Chair for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence University of Augsburg
PsyEvo: A Personalized Counseling Agent That Self-Evolves at Test Time
Oct 2, 2026Yuting Yan, Shihao Xu, Junhao Yu +6LLM Agent Self-Improvement Mental Health Counseling
Lyncia Lab · Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute
Empath: Tracing Multi-Level Emotion Dynamics in Crisis Counseling Dialogues
Sep 24, 2026Ziwei Gong, Yuchen Huang, Wen Liang +4Mental Health Counseling Emotional Support Conversation
Columbia University, USA · Barnard College, USA
Steering the Compass: Aligning Dynamic Psychological Counseling Conversations with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Strategies
Sep 17, 2026Zimu Wang, Yiwen Jiang, Xiangyu Zhao +10Mental Health Counseling Synthetic Data Generation for Language Models
AIM for Health Lab, Monash University · University of Liverpool · Massachusetts Institute of Technology +2
MOCC-R1: Reinforcing Reasoning-Response Consistency for Multimodal Counselor Response Generation
Sep 15, 2026Wenjie Zheng, Qiming Xie, Jianfei Yu +1Multimodal Generation Reasoning Consistency in Language Models
School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University of Science & Technology, Nanjing, China · School of Intelligence Science and Technology, Nanjing University, China
K-Bench: a clinically calibrated benchmark for evaluating large language models in high-risk mental health conversations
Sep 14, 2026Laura M. Vowels, Matthew J. Vowels, Shivali Sharma +9LLM Safety Benchmarks Mental Health Counseling
School of Psychology, University of Roehampton, London, United Kingdom · Kivira Health, United Kingdom · University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, United Kingdom +4
Adapting from Downturns: Prediction of Long-Term Conversational-Skill Development in Mental-Health Crisis Counselors
Sep 3, 2026Vivian Nguyen, Lillian Lee, Elizabeth A. Olson +1Human Behavior Prediction Mental Health Counseling
Cornell University · Crisis Text Line
LongCounsel-8: A Benchmark Suite for Longitudinal Depression Tracking from Multi-Session Counseling Dialogues
Sep 3, 2026Jiayi Li, Zhaomin Wu, Bingsheng HeMental Health Counseling Depression Detection
Department of Computer Science National University of Singapore
When Retrieval Helps: Selective Retrieval for Single-Turn Mental-Health QA
Sep 3, 2026Hyunseo Oh, Chong-Kwon Kim, Yoonhyuk ChoiRetrieval-Augmented Generation Mental Health Counseling
Sookmyung Women’s University · Korea Institute of Energy Technology
Beyond Reflection: Affirmation as a Promising Behavioral Marker Associated with Quality in Text-Based Counseling
Aug 27, 2026Michimasa InabaMental Health Counseling Conversational Agents
The University of Electro-Communications 1-5-1, Chofugaoka, Chofu, Tokyo, Japan
BiGraph-Diffuse: A Bidirectional Diffusion Language Model with Graph-Structured Retrieval For Mental Health Counseling
Aug 25, 2026Yuxiang Cheng, Quanwei Tang, Lvhui Lu +3Diffusion Language Models Mental Health Counseling
Dongwu Business School, Soochow University, Suzhou, China · School of Computer Science and Technology, Soochow University, Suzhou, China · College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Move by Move: Measuring and Steering How LLMs Conduct Psychotherapy
Aug 21, 2026Afonso Baldo, Hugo Pitorro, Areti Vassilopoulos +5Clinical Language Model Evaluation Mental Health Counseling
Sword Health · Instituto Superior Técnico · Yale University
PatientAct: Theory-Grounded Mental Health Client Simulation
Aug 13, 2026Sahand Sabour, TszYam NG, Yaqian Chen +3Mental Health Counseling User Simulation
The CoAI Group, DCST, Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China · Department of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China · Counseling and Psychological Development Guidance Center, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
ODRA: Synthesizing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Sessions with Structured Chain-Of-Thought and Dynamic Patient Resistance
Aug 5, 2026Javier Rodriguez-Juan, Hiba Arnaout, Jose Garcia-Rodriguez +2Mental Health Counseling Human Behavior Simulation
13DPLab, Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Alicante · 2UKP Lab, Department of Computer Science and Hessian Center for AI (hessian.AI), Technische Universität Darmstadt
Cognivia: A Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Copilot for Evidence-Based Mental Healthcare
Jul 28, 2026Qi Chen, Siria Xiyueyao Luo, Jian Wang +3Mental Health Counseling Mental Health Conversational Agents
Sichuan University Sichuan, China · Southwest Petroleum University Sichuan, China · University of Groningen Netherland +3
MyMentorLLM: A psychotherapy GenAI environment with multimodal voice/text patients, trainees and experts for deliberate practice
Jul 28, 2026Rodolfo Rizzi, Alessandro Grecucci, Massimo StellaMental Health Counseling Multi-Agent LLM Systems
CogNosco Lab, Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Italy. · Department of Education, Psychology and Communication Sciences, University of Bari, Italy.
EmoTrace: An Emotion Trajectory-Centered Framework for Psychological Support Dialogue Generation
Jul 26, 2026Kaitong Weng, Lixin Liu, Zihao Liu +2Mental Health Counseling Emotional Support Conversation
Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University
GEMCo: A Validated, Ethically Releasable Proxy for Inaccessible Counselling Data
Jul 26, 2026Philipp Steigerwald, Eric Rudolph, Mara Stieler +3Mental Health Counseling Mental Health
Faculty of Computer Science, Center for Artificial Intelligence (KIZ) · Technische Hochschule Nürnberg Georg Simon Ohm, Nürnberg, Germany · Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute for E-Counselling
Guiding Language Models to Be More Empathetic: Culturally Sensitive Mental Health Advice Generation Through Human-LLM Collaboration
Jul 26, 2026Fatema Tuj Johora Faria, Mukaffi Bin Moin, Md. Mahfuzur Rahman +3Mental Health Counseling LLM Prompting
Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology · Bangladesh University of Business and Technology · The University of New South Wales +2
Training Therapeutic Judges and Multi-Agent Systems for Human-Aligned Mental Health Support
Jun 29, 2026Mizanur Rahman, Abeer Badawi, Elahe Rahimi +4Emotional Support Conversation Multi-Agent LLM Systems
1York University, Ontario, Canada · 2Vector Institute, Ontario, Canada · 3Connected Minds, Ontario, Canada +1
MIThinker: A Plug-and-Play Policy-Optimized Thinker For Motivational Interviewing Counseling
Jun 28, 2026Yizhe Yang, Palakorn Achananuparp, Heyan Huang +2Mental Health Counseling Emotional Support Conversation
Beijing Institute of Technology · Singapore Management University · Australian National University
MindTailor: Personalized Emotional Support via Post History-Grounded Case Formulation and Collaborative Refinement
Jun 20, 2026Suhyun Han, Kyunghyun Cho, JinYeong BakMental Health Counseling Emotional Support Conversation
Sungkyunkwan University · Suwon · South Korea +3
Toward Accessible Psychotherapy Training Using AI-Driven Interactive Patient Avatars
Jun 16, 2026Pascal Riachi, Sofie Kamber, Stella Brogna +2Mental Health Counseling Spoken Dialogue Systems
ETH Zurich · Switzerland · University of Lucerne
When Clients Stop Following: A Cognitive Conceptualization Diagram-driven Framework for Strategic Counseling
Jun 3, 2026Yihao Qin, Junyi Zhao, Changsheng Ma +4Mental Health Counseling Cognitive Modeling
School of Information Science and Engineering, Lanzhou University
DMT-CBT: Longitudinal Therapeutic State Modeling for CBT Counseling
Jun 2, 2026Chang Liu, Shuyi Zhang, Changsheng Ma +3Mental Health Counseling Multimodal Large Language Models
School of Information Science and Engineering, Lanzhou University
EmoTrack: Clinical-Semantic Modeling for Text-Based Depression Severity Estimation
May 21, 2026Zhaomin Wu, Jiayi Li, Bingsheng HeMental Health Counseling Depression Detection
Department of Computer Science National University of Singapore
Psy-Chronicle: Synthesizing Campus Counseling Grounded in a Student's Semester Timeline
May 21, 2026Chaogui GouMental Health Counseling Emotional Support Conversation
University of Science and Technology Beijing
CBT-Audio: Evaluating Audio Language Models for Patient-Side Distress Intensity Estimation in CBT Session Recordings
May 17, 2026Qixuan Hu, Shuchang Ye, Xumou Zhang +8Audio-Language Model Evaluation Mental Health Counseling
School of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, University of Sydney, Australia · School of Psychology, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney, Australia · CHeBA (Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing), School of Clinical Medicine, Discipline of Psychiatry & Mental Health, The University of New South Wales, Australia +2
Auditing Stealth Sycophancy in Mental-Health Dialogue: Structured Clinical-State Diagnostics and Clean Matched Benchmarks
May 5, 2026Tianze Han, Beining Xu, Hanbo Zhang +1Mental Health Counseling LLM Sycophancy
Shenzhen MSU-BIT University, Shenzhen, China
SAGE: A Strategy-Aware Graph-Enhanced Generation Framework For Online Counseling
Apr 29, 2026Eliya Naomi Aharon, Meytal Grimland, Avi Segal +4Mental Health Counseling Mental Health
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Beer Sheva, Israel · University of Haifa Haifa, Israel · Sahar Tel Aviv, Israel

Oct 6, 2026J/K move · Enter open · S save

Language Carries the Expert's Impression: Instrument-Anchored LLM Judges Transfer Counseling-Quality Assessment and Beat In-Domain Training

Tobias Hallmen, Elisabeth André

Chair for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence University of Augsburg

Mental Health Counseling Cross-Domain Transfer Learning Automated Evaluation

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Automatic assessment of communication quality in dyadic counseling conversations is bottlenecked by data: expert-rated corpora are small and expensive to grow. We study cross-domain transfer of expert overall-impression prediction across three German corpora of simulated counseling (two general-practice medical, one school-related parent-teacher;

n=195

expert-rated sessions, one corpus after scale equating). Training on the other domains beats training in-domain: leave-one-domain-out transfer reaches nested Spearman

ρ= 0.54

against

\le 0.48

within the target domain, a paired session-level gap of

+0.15

that holds at

+0.12

when the training-set sizes are matched, so it is not simply data volume. The decisive features are session-level construct scores from small open-weight LLMs reading the two-speaker transcript, with the constructs largely derived from the experts' rating instruments: the instrument-derived battery lifts a single judge from

0.32

0.41

over generic dialogue qualities, judges from three model families ensemble to

0.51

language-only, and a nonverbal-dyadic block adds

+0.03

more, not separable from noise at this sample size. We also price the recording setup: one corpus lost its per-speaker audio, 16% of its diarised segments carry the wrong speaker, and repair is worth

+0.07

there. At practically attainable corpus sizes, the expert's overall impression is carried by what is said, and by other communication programs' data more than by one's own.