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 Therabot generative chatbot, customized with expert input, for four weeks; the remainder were waitlisted and received access after the trial concluded. Outcomes were assessed at weeks four and eight. Symptom changes were analyzed using mixed models with cumulative relationships. 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 (on average, more than six hours) and rated the psychotherapeutic alliance with it as comparable to that of a live therapist.
