A Survey of Large Language Models in Psychotherapy: Current Landscape and Future Directions

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Na, Hongbin, Hua, Yining, Wang, Zimu, Shen, Tao, Yu, Beibei, Wang, Lilin, Wang, Wei, Torous, John, Chen, Ling
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Na, Hongbin
Hua, Yining
Wang, Zimu
Shen, Tao
Yu, Beibei
Wang, Lilin
Wang, Wei
Torous, John
Chen, Ling
author_facet Na, Hongbin
Hua, Yining
Wang, Zimu
Shen, Tao
Yu, Beibei
Wang, Lilin
Wang, Wei
Torous, John
Chen, Ling
contents Mental health is increasingly critical in contemporary healthcare, with psychotherapy demanding dynamic, context-sensitive interactions that traditional NLP methods struggle to capture. Large Language Models (LLMs) offer significant potential for addressing this gap due to their ability to handle extensive context and multi-turn reasoning. This review introduces a conceptual taxonomy dividing psychotherapy into interconnected stages--assessment, diagnosis, and treatment--to systematically examine LLM advancements and challenges. Our comprehensive analysis reveals imbalances in current research, such as a focus on common disorders, linguistic biases, fragmented methods, and limited theoretical integration. We identify critical challenges including capturing dynamic symptom fluctuations, overcoming linguistic and cultural biases, and ensuring diagnostic reliability. Highlighting future directions, we advocate for continuous multi-stage modeling, real-time adaptive systems grounded in psychological theory, and diversified research covering broader mental disorders and therapeutic approaches, aiming toward more holistic and clinically integrated psychotherapy LLMs systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_11095
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Survey of Large Language Models in Psychotherapy: Current Landscape and Future Directions
Na, Hongbin
Hua, Yining
Wang, Zimu
Shen, Tao
Yu, Beibei
Wang, Lilin
Wang, Wei
Torous, John
Chen, Ling
Computation and Language
Mental health is increasingly critical in contemporary healthcare, with psychotherapy demanding dynamic, context-sensitive interactions that traditional NLP methods struggle to capture. Large Language Models (LLMs) offer significant potential for addressing this gap due to their ability to handle extensive context and multi-turn reasoning. This review introduces a conceptual taxonomy dividing psychotherapy into interconnected stages--assessment, diagnosis, and treatment--to systematically examine LLM advancements and challenges. Our comprehensive analysis reveals imbalances in current research, such as a focus on common disorders, linguistic biases, fragmented methods, and limited theoretical integration. We identify critical challenges including capturing dynamic symptom fluctuations, overcoming linguistic and cultural biases, and ensuring diagnostic reliability. Highlighting future directions, we advocate for continuous multi-stage modeling, real-time adaptive systems grounded in psychological theory, and diversified research covering broader mental disorders and therapeutic approaches, aiming toward more holistic and clinically integrated psychotherapy LLMs systems.
title A Survey of Large Language Models in Psychotherapy: Current Landscape and Future Directions
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.11095