mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Large Language Models in Mental Health Care: a Scoping Review

arXiv 2401.02984 ↗First posted 1 Jan 2024cs.CL cs.AIcited by 34

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

Objectieve:This review aims to deliver a comprehensive analysis of Large Language Models (LLMs) utilization in mental health care, evaluating their effectiveness, identifying challenges, and exploring their potential for future application. Materials and Methods: A systematic search was performed across multiple databases including PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, arXiv, medRxiv, and PsyArXiv in November 2023. The review includes all types of original research, regardless of peer-review status, published or disseminated between October 1, 2019, and December 2, 2023. Studies were included without language restrictions if they employed LLMs developed after T5 and directly investigated research questions within mental health care settings. Results: Out of an initial 313 articles, 34 were selected based on their relevance to LLMs applications in mental health care and the rigor of their reported outcomes. The review identified various LLMs applications in mental health care, including diagnostics, therapy, and enhancing patient engagement. Key challenges highlighted were related to data availability and reliability, the nuanced handling of mental states, and effective evaluation methods. While LLMs showed promise in improving accuracy and accessibility, significant gaps in clinical applicability and ethical considerations were noted. Conclusion: LLMs hold substantial promise for enhancing mental health care. For their full potential to be realized, emphasis must be placed on developing robust datasets, development and evaluation frameworks, ethical guidelines, and interdisciplinary collaborations to address current limitations.

Key facts. Cited by 34 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 70 of its 142 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 1 Jan 2024.

Builds on

70 of 142 references.

References · 70

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
  2. 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,399
  3. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,419
  4. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,396
  5. 2019Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformercited by 14,599
  6. 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Modelscited by 14,132
  7. 2023Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Modelscited by 13,028
  8. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,459
  9. 2019BERTScore: Evaluating Text Generation with BERTcited by 5,512
  10. 2022PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathwayscited by 5,326
  11. 2013Efficient Estimation of Word Representations in Vector Spacecited by 4,375
  12. 2023Mistral 7Bcited by 3,164
38 more
  1. 2022Scaling Instruction-Finetuned Language Modelscited by 3,024
  2. 2023A Survey of Large Language Modelscited by 2,576
  3. 2021Pre-train, Prompt, and Predict: A Systematic Survey of Prompting Methods in Natural Language Processingcited by 2,234
  4. 2021GLM: General Language Model Pretraining with Autoregressive Blank Infillingcited by 1,031
  5. 2022GLM-130B: An Open Bilingual Pre-trained Modelcited by 843
  6. 2021BARTScore: Evaluating Generated Text as Text Generationcited by 722
  7. 2020Recipes for building an open-domain chatbotcited by 593
  8. 2020GoEmotions: A Dataset of Fine-Grained Emotionscited by 486
  9. 2023GPTScore: Evaluate as You Desirecited by 361
  10. 2021Towards Emotional Support Dialog Systemscited by 299
  11. 2022UL2: Unifying Language Learning Paradigmscited by 295
  12. 2020A Computational Approach to Understanding Empathy Expressed in Text-Based Mental Health Supportcited by 182
  13. 2021PanGu-α: Large-scale Autoregressive Pretrained Chinese Language Models with Auto-parallel Computationcited by 134
  14. 2023A Survey of Large Language Models in Medicine: Progress, Application, and Challengecited by 124
  15. 2021PsyQA: A Chinese Dataset for Generating Long Counseling Text for Mental Health Supportcited by 92
  16. 2019ACUTE-EVAL: Improved Dialogue Evaluation with Optimized Questions and Multi-turn Comparisonscited by 83
  17. 2019Dreaddit: A Reddit Dataset for Stress Analysis in Social Mediacited by 81
  18. 2015A Primer on Neural Network Models for Natural Language Processingcited by 76
  19. 2023Understanding the Benefits and Challenges of Using Large Language Model-based Conversational Agents for Mental Well-being Supportcited by 75
  20. 2018SMHD: A Large-Scale Resource for Exploring Online Language Usage for Multiple Mental Health Conditionscited by 73
  21. 2023Mental-LLM: Leveraging Large Language Models for Mental Health Prediction via Online Text Datacited by 66
  22. 2023MentaLLaMA: Interpretable Mental Health Analysis on Social Media with Large Language Modelscited by 63
  23. 2023Building Emotional Support Chatbots in the Era of LLMscited by 62
  24. 2023Evaluation of ChatGPT for NLP-based Mental Health Applicationscited by 53
  25. 2023Towards Interpretable Mental Health Analysis with Large Language Modelscited by 53
  26. 2023MindfulDiary: Harnessing Large Language Model to Support Psychiatric Patients' Journalingcited by 50
  27. 2021Deep Learning for Suicide and Depression Identification with Unsupervised Label Correctioncited by 45
  28. 2023ChatCounselor: A Large Language Models for Mental Health Supportcited by 44
  29. 2022Automatic Depression Detection: An Emotional Audio-Textual Corpus and a GRU/BiLSTM-based Modelcited by 37
  30. 2022D4: a Chinese Dialogue Dataset for Depression-Diagnosis-Oriented Chatcited by 37
  31. 2023Psy-LLM: Scaling up Global Mental Health Psychological Services with AI-based Large Language Modelscited by 36
  32. 2023Can large language models replace humans in the systematic review process? Evaluating GPT-4's efficacy in screening and extracting data from peer-reviewed and grey literature in multiple languagescited by 36
  33. 2022CAMS: An Annotated Corpus for Causal Analysis of Mental Health Issues in Social Media Postscited by 34
  34. 2023Ask an Expert: Leveraging Language Models to Improve Strategic Reasoning in Goal-Oriented Dialogue Modelscited by 31
  35. 2023Empowering Psychotherapy with Large Language Models: Cognitive Distortion Detection through Diagnosis of Thought Promptingcited by 31
  36. 2020Suicidal Ideation and Mental Disorder Detection with Attentive Relation Networkscited by 28
  37. 2022GreenPLM: Cross-Lingual Transfer of Monolingual Pre-Trained Language Models at Almost No Costcited by 24
  38. 2023Enhancing Psychological Counseling with Large Language Model: A Multifaceted Decision-Support System for Non-Professionalscited by 24

50 most cited of 70 All 70 (JSON)

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 12; 2025: 16; 2026: 6.

34 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2024Depression Detection on Social Media with Large Language Modelscited by 20
  2. 2025Citrus: Leveraging Expert Cognitive Pathways in a Medical Language Model for Advanced Medical Decision Supportcited by 16
  3. 2024Large Language Model for Mental Health: A Systematic Reviewcited by 14
  4. 2024Aligning Large Language Models for Enhancing Psychiatric Interviews Through Symptom Delineation and Summarization: Pilot Studycited by 7
  5. 2024A Comprehensive Evaluation of Large Language Models on Mental Illnessescited by 7
  6. 2024Hybrid Training Approaches for LLMs: Leveraging Real and Synthetic Data to Enhance Model Performance in Domain-Specific Applicationscited by 7
  7. 2024Applying and Evaluating Large Language Models in Mental Health Care: A Scoping Review of Human-Assessed Generative Taskscited by 6
  8. 2025HamRaz: A Culture-Based Persian Conversation Dataset for Person-Centered Therapy Using LLM Agentscited by 6
  9. 2025Survey and Experiments on Mental Disorder Detection via Social Media: From Large Language Models and RAG to Agentscited by 6
  10. 2025ProMind-LLM: Proactive Mental Health Care via Causal Reasoning with Sensor Datacited by 6
  11. 2025AI shares emotion with humans across languages and culturescited by 6
  12. 2024Guardians of Discourse: Evaluating LLMs on Multilingual Offensive Language Detectioncited by 5
22 more
  1. 2025Labeling Free-text Data using Language Model Ensemblescited by 5
  2. 2025CATCH: A Novel Data Synthesis Framework for High Therapy Fidelity and Memory-Driven Planning Chain of Thought in AI Counselingcited by 5
  3. 2025Evolution of meta's llama models and parameter-efficient fine-tuning of large language models: a surveycited by 5
  4. 2026AI Psychosis: Does Conversational AI Amplify Delusion-Related Language?cited by 5
  5. 2024Advancing Depression Detection on Social Media Platforms Through Fine-Tuned Large Language Modelscited by 4
  6. 2026Beyond Simulations: What 20,000 Real Conversations Reveal About Mental Health AI Safetycited by 4
  7. 2024Copiloting Diagnosis of Autism in Real Clinical Scenarios via LLMscited by 3
  8. 2025Interaction Protocol Shapes Moral Judgment in Multi-Agent Debatecited by 3
  9. 2025Natural Language Tools: A Natural Language Approach to Tool Calling In Large Language Agentscited by 3
  10. 2026Small Agent Group is the Future of Digital Healthcited by 3
  11. 2024Optimizing Psychological Counseling with Instruction-Tuned Large Language Modelscited by 2
  12. 2024A Multi-Agent Dual Dialogue System to Support Mental Health Care Providerscited by 1
  13. 2025OnRL-RAG: Real-Time Personalized Mental Health Dialogue Systemcited by 1
  14. 2025AI-Augmented LLMs Achieve Therapist-Level Responses in Motivational Interviewingcited by 1
  15. 2025From Reddit to Generative AI: Evaluating Large Language Models for Anxiety Support Fine-tuned on Social Media Datacited by 1
  16. 2024IoT-Based Preventive Mental Health Using Knowledge Graphs and Standards for Better Well-Beingcited by 0
  17. 2025When and How to Integrate Multimodal Large Language Models in College Psychotherapy: Perspectives from Multi-stakeholderscited by 0
  18. 2025Artificial Empathy: AI based Mental Healthcited by 0
  19. 2025PsycholexTherapy: Simulating Reasoning in Psychotherapy with Small Language Models in Persiancited by 0
  20. 2026PsyBridge: A Hybrid Intelligent Framework for Multi-Dimensional Mental Health Assessment and Decision Supportcited by 0
  21. 2026One Year Later...The Harms Persist, But So Do We!cited by 0
  22. 2026Candidate Generation and Definition-Guided Verification for Sentence-Level Depression Symptom Recognitioncited by 0