Understanding the Therapeutic Relationship between Counselors and Clients in Online Text-based Counseling using LLMs

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Li, Anqi, Lu, Yu, Song, Nirui, Zhang, Shuai, Ma, Lizhi, Lan, Zhenzhong
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Li, Anqi
Lu, Yu
Song, Nirui
Zhang, Shuai
Ma, Lizhi
Lan, Zhenzhong
author_facet Li, Anqi
Lu, Yu
Song, Nirui
Zhang, Shuai
Ma, Lizhi
Lan, Zhenzhong
contents Robust therapeutic relationships between counselors and clients are fundamental to counseling effectiveness. The assessment of therapeutic alliance is well-established in traditional face-to-face therapy but may not directly translate to text-based settings. With millions of individuals seeking support through online text-based counseling, understanding the relationship in such contexts is crucial. In this paper, we present an automatic approach using large language models (LLMs) to understand the development of therapeutic alliance in text-based counseling. We adapt a theoretically grounded framework specifically to the context of online text-based counseling and develop comprehensive guidelines for characterizing the alliance. We collect a comprehensive counseling dataset and conduct multiple expert evaluations on a subset based on this framework. Our LLM-based approach, combined with guidelines and simultaneous extraction of supportive evidence underlying its predictions, demonstrates effectiveness in identifying the therapeutic alliance. Through further LLM-based evaluations on additional conversations, our findings underscore the challenges counselors face in cultivating strong online relationships with clients. Furthermore, we demonstrate the potential of LLM-based feedback mechanisms to enhance counselors' ability to build relationships, supported by a small-scale proof-of-concept.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_11958
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Understanding the Therapeutic Relationship between Counselors and Clients in Online Text-based Counseling using LLMs
Li, Anqi
Lu, Yu
Song, Nirui
Zhang, Shuai
Ma, Lizhi
Lan, Zhenzhong
Computation and Language
Robust therapeutic relationships between counselors and clients are fundamental to counseling effectiveness. The assessment of therapeutic alliance is well-established in traditional face-to-face therapy but may not directly translate to text-based settings. With millions of individuals seeking support through online text-based counseling, understanding the relationship in such contexts is crucial. In this paper, we present an automatic approach using large language models (LLMs) to understand the development of therapeutic alliance in text-based counseling. We adapt a theoretically grounded framework specifically to the context of online text-based counseling and develop comprehensive guidelines for characterizing the alliance. We collect a comprehensive counseling dataset and conduct multiple expert evaluations on a subset based on this framework. Our LLM-based approach, combined with guidelines and simultaneous extraction of supportive evidence underlying its predictions, demonstrates effectiveness in identifying the therapeutic alliance. Through further LLM-based evaluations on additional conversations, our findings underscore the challenges counselors face in cultivating strong online relationships with clients. Furthermore, we demonstrate the potential of LLM-based feedback mechanisms to enhance counselors' ability to build relationships, supported by a small-scale proof-of-concept.
title Understanding the Therapeutic Relationship between Counselors and Clients in Online Text-based Counseling using LLMs
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.11958