Nicholas Jacobson and colleagues at Dartmouth College reported the success of a clinical trial of a generative chatbot for depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. The randomized controlled trial involved 210 patients with clinically significant symptoms of major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, or eating disorders. Of these, 106 interacted with the generative chatbot Therabot, customized with expert assistance, for four weeks; the rest were waitlisted and given access after the trial ended. Outcomes were assessed at weeks four and eight. Changes in symptoms were analyzed using mixed models with cumulative links. The results were published in NEJM AI.
The chatbot resulted in significantly greater mean reductions in symptoms of major depressive disorder (-6.13 vs. -2.63 points at week 4 and -7.93 vs. -4.22 at week 8), generalized anxiety disorder (-2.32 vs. -0.13 and -3.18 vs. -1.11, respectively), and eating disorder (-9.83 vs. -1.66 and -10.23 vs. -3.70, respectively). Participants actively used the bot (more than six hours on average) and rated the psychotherapeutic alliance with it as comparable to a live therapist.