PsychēChat: An Empathic Framework Focused on Emotion Shift Tracking and Safety Risk Analysis in Psychological Counseling

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Xia, Zhentao, Fan, Yongqi, Chu, Yuxiang, Yin, Yichao, Chen, Liangliang, Ruan, Tong, Zhang, Weiyan
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Xia, Zhentao
Fan, Yongqi
Chu, Yuxiang
Yin, Yichao
Chen, Liangliang
Ruan, Tong
Zhang, Weiyan
author_facet Xia, Zhentao
Fan, Yongqi
Chu, Yuxiang
Yin, Yichao
Chen, Liangliang
Ruan, Tong
Zhang, Weiyan
contents Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated notable advancements in psychological counseling. However, existing models generally do not explicitly model seekers' emotion shifts across counseling sessions, a core focus in classical psychological schools. Moreover, how to align counselor models' responses with these emotion shifts while proactively mitigating safety risks remains underexplored. To bridge these gaps, we propose PsychēChat, which explicitly integrates emotion shift tracking and safety risk analysis for psychological counseling. Specifically, we employ interactive role-playing to synthesize counselor--seeker dialogues, incorporating two modules: Emotion Management Module, to capture seekers' current emotions and emotion shifts; and Risk Control Module, to anticipate seekers' subsequent reactions and identify potential risks. Furthermore, we introduce two modeling paradigms. The Agent Mode structures emotion management, risk control, and counselor responses into a collaborative multi-agent pipeline. The LLM Mode integrates these stages into a unified chain-of-thought for end-to-end inference, balancing efficiency and performance. Extensive experiments, including interactive scoring, dialogue-level evaluation, and human assessment, demonstrate that PsychēChat outperforms existing methods for emotional insight and safety control.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_12392
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PsychēChat: An Empathic Framework Focused on Emotion Shift Tracking and Safety Risk Analysis in Psychological Counseling
Xia, Zhentao
Fan, Yongqi
Chu, Yuxiang
Yin, Yichao
Chen, Liangliang
Ruan, Tong
Zhang, Weiyan
Artificial Intelligence
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated notable advancements in psychological counseling. However, existing models generally do not explicitly model seekers' emotion shifts across counseling sessions, a core focus in classical psychological schools. Moreover, how to align counselor models' responses with these emotion shifts while proactively mitigating safety risks remains underexplored. To bridge these gaps, we propose PsychēChat, which explicitly integrates emotion shift tracking and safety risk analysis for psychological counseling. Specifically, we employ interactive role-playing to synthesize counselor--seeker dialogues, incorporating two modules: Emotion Management Module, to capture seekers' current emotions and emotion shifts; and Risk Control Module, to anticipate seekers' subsequent reactions and identify potential risks. Furthermore, we introduce two modeling paradigms. The Agent Mode structures emotion management, risk control, and counselor responses into a collaborative multi-agent pipeline. The LLM Mode integrates these stages into a unified chain-of-thought for end-to-end inference, balancing efficiency and performance. Extensive experiments, including interactive scoring, dialogue-level evaluation, and human assessment, demonstrate that PsychēChat outperforms existing methods for emotional insight and safety control.
title PsychēChat: An Empathic Framework Focused on Emotion Shift Tracking and Safety Risk Analysis in Psychological Counseling
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.12392