# An Integrative Survey on Mental Health Conversational Agents to Bridge Computer Science and Medical Perspectives

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.17017 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17017/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical and scientific domain agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 12 of its 152 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Oct 2023.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Medical and scientific domain agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/medical-and-scientific-domain-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [A Multitask, Multilingual, Multimodal Evaluation of ChatGPT on Reasoning, Hallucination, and Interactivity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04023/) (2023)
- [DialoGPT: Large-Scale Generative Pre-training for Conversational Response Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.00536/) (2019)
- [The Internal State of an LLM Knows When It's Lying](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13734/) (2023)
- [Rasa: Open Source Language Understanding and Dialogue Management](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.05181/) (2017)
- [Towards Understanding Emotional Intelligence for Behavior Change Chatbots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10664/) (2019)
- [CASS: Towards Building a Social-Support Chatbot for Online Health Community](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01583/) (2021)
- [ERICA: An Empathetic Android Companion for Covid-19 Quarantine](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02325/) (2021)
- [ASR Adaptation for E-commerce Chatbots using Cross-Utterance Context and Multi-Task Language Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09532/) (2021)
- [Discourse Behavior of Older Adults Interacting With a Dialogue Agent Competent in Multiple Topics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.06279/) (2019)
- [Alexa Depression and Anxiety Self-tests: A Preliminary Analysis of User Experience and Trust](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.03892/) (2020)
- [A Grounded Well-being Conversational Agent with Multiple Interaction Modes: Preliminary Results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14083/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Evaluating LLM-based Agents for Multi-Turn Conversations: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22458/) (2025)
- [Can AI Relate: Testing Large Language Model Response for Mental Health Support](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12021/) (2024)
- [EmoAgent: Assessing and Safeguarding Human-AI Interaction for Mental Health Safety](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09689/) (2025)
- [Challenges in Testing Large Language Model Based Software: A Faceted Taxonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00481/) (2025)
- [COCOA: CBT-based Conversational Counseling Agent using Memory Specialized in Cognitive Distortions and Dynamic Prompt](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17546/) (2024)
- [KMI: A Dataset of Korean Motivational Interviewing Dialogues for Psychotherapy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05651/) (2025)
- [Interpersonal Theory of Suicide as a Lens to Examine Suicidal Ideation in Online Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13277/) (2025)
- [Large Language Model Agents for Improving Engagement with Behavior Change Interventions: Application to Digital Mindfulness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13067/) (2024)
- [From Conversation to Automation: Leveraging LLMs for Problem-Solving Therapy Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.06101/) (2025)
- [Eval4Sim: An Evaluation Framework for Persona Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02876/) (2026)
- [Reviewing Clinical Knowledge in Medical Large Language Models: Training and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20988/) (2025)
- [The Slow Drift of Support: Boundary Failures in Multi-Turn Mental Health LLM Dialogues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14269/) (2026)
- [The Cost-Benefit of Interdisciplinarity in AI for Mental Health](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.18581/) (2025)
- [Conversational Control with Ontologies for Large Language Models: A Lightweight Framework for Constrained Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.04450/) (2026)
- [Enhancing Mental Health Counseling Support in Bangladesh using Culturally-Grounded Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14576/) (2026)
- [Trust Stack for Mental Health AI: A Survey of Calibration across Human, Interaction, and AI Layers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.20166/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Mental health conversational agents (a.k.a. chatbots) are widely studied for their potential to offer accessible support to those experiencing mental health challenges. Previous surveys on the topic primarily consider papers published in either computer science or medicine, leading to a divide in understanding and hindering the sharing of beneficial knowledge between both domains. To bridge this gap, we conduct a comprehensive literature review using the PRISMA framework, reviewing 534 papers published in both computer science and medicine. Our systematic review reveals 136 key papers on building mental health-related conversational agents with diverse characteristics of modeling and experimental design techniques. We find that computer science papers focus on LLM techniques and evaluating response quality using automated metrics with little attention to the application while medical papers use rule-based conversational agents and outcome metrics to measure the health outcomes of participants. Based on our findings on transparency, ethics, and cultural heterogeneity in this review, we provide a few recommendations to help bridge the disciplinary divide and enable the cross-disciplinary development of mental health conversational agents.