1. PATIENT-{\Psi}: Using Large Language Models to Simulate Patients for Training Mental Health Professionals
- Author
-
Wang, Ruiyi, Milani, Stephanie, Chiu, Jamie C., Zhi, Jiayin, Eack, Shaun M., Labrum, Travis, Murphy, Samuel M., Jones, Nev, Hardy, Kate, Shen, Hong, Fang, Fei, and Chen, Zhiyu Zoey
- Subjects
Computer Science - Computation and Language - Abstract
Mental illness remains one of the most critical public health issues. Despite its importance, many mental health professionals highlight a disconnect between their training and actual real-world patient practice. To help bridge this gap, we propose PATIENT-{\Psi}, a novel patient simulation framework for cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) training. To build PATIENT-{\Psi}, we construct diverse patient cognitive models based on CBT principles and use large language models (LLMs) programmed with these cognitive models to act as a simulated therapy patient. We propose an interactive training scheme, PATIENT-{\Psi}-TRAINER, for mental health trainees to practice a key skill in CBT -- formulating the cognitive model of the patient -- through role-playing a therapy session with PATIENT-{\Psi}. To evaluate PATIENT-{\Psi}, we conducted a comprehensive user study of 13 mental health trainees and 20 experts. The results demonstrate that practice using PATIENT-{\Psi}-TRAINER enhances the perceived skill acquisition and confidence of the trainees beyond existing forms of training such as textbooks, videos, and role-play with non-patients. Based on the experts' perceptions, PATIENT-{\Psi} is perceived to be closer to real patient interactions than GPT-4, and PATIENT-{\Psi}-TRAINER holds strong promise to improve trainee competencies. Our code and data are released at \url{https://github.com/ruiyiw/patient-psi}., Comment: EMNLP 2024 Main, 9 pages, 5 figures
- Published
- 2024