# Domain-Specific Improvement on Psychotherapy Chatbot Using Assistant

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.16160 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16160/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 20 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Self-Instruct: Aligning Language Models with Self-Generated Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10560/) (2022)
- [Self-RAG: Learning to Retrieve, Generate, and Critique through Self-Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11511/) (2023)
- [GLM: General Language Model Pretraining with Autoregressive Blank Infilling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10360/) (2021)
- [Diffusion-LM Improves Controllable Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14217/) (2022)
- [Super-NaturalInstructions: Generalization via Declarative Instructions on 1600+ NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.07705/) (2022)
- [Instruction Tuning with GPT-4](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03277/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Verifiability in Generative Search Engines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.09848/) (2023)
- [Give Us the Facts: Enhancing Large Language Models with Knowledge Graphs for Fact-aware Language Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11489/) (2023)
- [In-BoXBART: Get Instructions into Biomedical Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.07600/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Transforming Tuberculosis Care: Optimizing Large Language Models For Enhanced Clinician-Patient Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.21236/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive generalization capabilities on specific tasks with human-written instruction data. However, the limited quantity, diversity, and professional expertise of such instruction data raise concerns about the performance of LLMs in psychotherapy tasks when provided with domain-specific instructions. To address this, we firstly propose Domain-Specific Assistant Instructions based on AlexanderStreet therapy, and secondly, we use an adaption fine-tuning method and retrieval augmented generation method to improve pre-trained LLMs. Through quantitative evaluation of linguistic quality using automatic and human evaluation, we observe that pre-trained LLMs on Psychotherapy Assistant Instructions outperform state-of-the-art LLMs response baselines. Our Assistant-Instruction approach offers a half-annotation method to align pre-trained LLMs with instructions and provide pre-trained LLMs with more psychotherapy knowledge.
