mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Helping the Helper: Supporting Peer Counselors via AI-Empowered Practice and Feedback

arXiv 2305.08982 ↗First posted 15 May 2023cs.HC cs.CLcited by 23

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Abstract (arXiv)

Millions of users come to online peer counseling platforms to seek support. However, studies show that online peer support groups are not always as effective as expected, largely due to users' negative experiences with unhelpful counselors. Peer counselors are key to the success of online peer counseling platforms, but most often do not receive appropriate training.Hence, we introduce CARE: an AI-based tool to empower and train peer counselors through practice and feedback. Concretely, CARE helps diagnose which counseling strategies are needed in a given situation and suggests example responses to counselors during their practice sessions. Building upon the Motivational Interviewing framework, CARE utilizes large-scale counseling conversation data with text generation techniques to enable these functionalities. We demonstrate the efficacy of CARE by performing quantitative evaluations and qualitative user studies through simulated chats and semi-structured interviews, finding that CARE especially helps novice counselors in challenging situations. The code is available at https://github.com/SALT-NLP/CARE

Key facts. Cited by 23 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 26 of its 155 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 May 2023.

Builds on

26 of 155 references.

References · 26

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14 more
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Citing papers per year: 2023: 6; 2024: 4; 2025: 6; 2026: 7.

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  1. 2023The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Surveycited by 1,439
  2. 2023Rehearsal: Simulating Conflict to Teach Conflict Resolutioncited by 55
  3. 2023Benefits and Harms of Large Language Models in Digital Mental Healthcited by 40
  4. 2023Empowering Psychotherapy with Large Language Models: Cognitive Distortion Detection through Diagnosis of Thought Promptingcited by 31
  5. 2024PATIENT-Psi: Using Large Language Models to Simulate Patients for Training Mental Health Professionalscited by 21
  6. 2023Harnessing Large Language Models' Empathetic Response Generation Capabilities for Online Mental Health Counselling Supportcited by 17
  7. 2024Social Skill Training with Large Language Modelscited by 15
  8. 2023Adaptive Instrument Design for Indirect Experimentscited by 6
  9. 2025Hanging in the Balance: Pivotal Moments in Crisis Counseling Conversationscited by 4
  10. 2025Found in Translation: Measuring Multilingual LLM Consistency as Simple as Translate then Evaluatecited by 3
  11. 2026Assessing Risks of Large Language Models in Mental Health Support: A Framework for Automated Clinical AI Red Teamingcited by 3
  12. 2024Interacting Large Language Model Agents. Interpretable Models and Social Learningcited by 2
11 more
  1. 2025Envisioning an AI-Enhanced Mental Health Ecosystemcited by 2
  2. 2024Therapy as an NLP Task: Comparing LLMs and Human Peers Behaviors in CBT Sessionscited by 1
  3. 2026From "Help" to Helpful: A Hierarchical Assessment of LLMs in Mental e-Health Applicationscited by 1
  4. 2026CAIA in Practice: Field Evaluation of an AI-Assisted Support System for Text-Based Online Counsellingcited by 1
  5. 2025When LLM Therapists Become Salespeople: Evaluating Large Language Models for Ethical Motivational Interviewingcited by 0
  6. 2025Exposure to Content Written by Large Language Models Can Reduce Stigma Around Opioid Use Disorder in Online Communitiescited by 0
  7. 2025"Is This Really a Human Peer Supporter?": Misalignments Between Peer Supporters and Experts in LLM-Supported Interactionscited by 0
  8. 2026Multi-dimensional Assessment and Explainable Feedback for Counselor Responses to Client Resistance in Text-based Counseling with LLMscited by 0
  9. 2026CounselReflect: Opportunities and Challenges for Designing Tools to Support Self-Reflection on Mental Health and Well-Being Conversations with AIcited by 0
  10. 2026MIThinker: A Plug-and-Play Policy-Optimized Thinker For Motivational Interviewing Counselingcited by 0
  11. 2026PeerPen: AI-Assisted Writing for Online Mental Health Peer Supportcited by 0