Applying a Chatbot to Geriatric Patients in Psychiatric Clinics: A Pilot Study

Applying a Chatbot to Geriatric Patients in Psychiatric Clinics: A Pilot Study

This study will use the caring chatbot developed by the Taipei University of Technology team to provide care for participants and use robots to talk to them to collect daily changes in mood, sleep, and activities, and analyze the factors that affect the physical and mental health of the elderly.

The prevalence of anxiety and depression in middle-aged and elderly people is quite high. Among the risk factors for illness, "loneliness" is closely related to the physical and mental health of the elderly: the higher the loneliness of the elderly, the more likely to develop unhealthy lifestyle habits and emotional symptoms such as depression and anxiety. Depression and anxiety are often comorbid, and the diagnoses of the two groups have many symptoms that overlap each other. Emotional symptoms that have not been effectively treated have a great impact on the quality of life, and the drug treatment of emotional disorders in the elderly is more difficult. In addition to medication, maintaining a healthy lifestyle is also conducive to the control of emotional disorders.

Information technology has been used in supplementary medical care and maintenance of physical and mental health for decades. However, reviewing the literature, there is less research on applications developed in cooperation between the information field and the field of psychiatric medical care, and there are no applications developed for the mental health of middle-aged and elderly people.

This study will use the caring chatbot developed by the National Taipei University of Technology team to provide care for the participants enrolled from the psychiatric outpatient department, and use the chatbot to talk to them to collect daily changes in mood, sleep, and activities, and analyze the factors that affect the mental health of the elderly.

This research anticipates the following goals:

1. With the chatbot developed, it provides care for subjects every day and collects their daily changes in mood, sleep, and activities.
2. Analyze the relationship between robot interaction and emotional changes, and evaluate the impact of chatbot intervention on the health behavior of the case.

Inclusion Criteria:

• with the diagnosis of persistent depressive disorder, major depressive disorder, general anxiety disorder, panic disorder, or agoraphobia
• the condition of their disease is relatively stable (defined as no thought of death and no medication adjustment in the recent 3 months).
• Have a personal mobile phone or communicator that can connect to the Internet

Exclusion Criteria:

• Those who are unwilling to participate in this research
• Those who have poor assessment ability by clinicians and cannot understand the content of the questionnaire; or those who cannot continue to complete the test due to their physical condition
• Comorbid schizophrenia or bipolar disorder
• Patients with dementia, brain injury, substance abuse, and stroke