# MentalAgora: A Gateway to Advanced Personalized Care in Mental Health through Multi-Agent Debating and Attribute Control

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.02736 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02736/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 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 19 of its 50 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Jul 2024.

## 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, 19 of 19)

- [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)
- [Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arena](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05685/) (2023)
- [BERTScore: Evaluating Text Generation with BERT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09675/) (2019)
- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14325/) (2023)
- [ChatEval: Towards Better LLM-based Evaluators through Multi-Agent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07201/) (2023)
- [Character-LLM: A Trainable Agent for Role-Playing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10158/) (2023)
- [Exploring Collaboration Mechanisms for LLM Agents: A Social Psychology View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02124/) (2023)
- [Continual Learning in Task-Oriented Dialogue Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15504/) (2020)
- [Cognitive Reframing of Negative Thoughts through Human-Language Model Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02466/) (2023)
- [Towards Facilitating Empathic Conversations in Online Mental Health Support: A Reinforcement Learning Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.07714/) (2021)
- [Cue-CoT: Chain-of-thought Prompting for Responding to In-depth Dialogue Questions with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11792/) (2023)
- [A Computational Framework for Behavioral Assessment of LLM Therapists](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00820/) (2024)
- [Meet Your Favorite Character: Open-domain Chatbot Mimicking Fictional Characters with only a Few Utterances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.10825/) (2022)
- [Controllable Generation from Pre-trained Language Models via Inverse Prompting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10685/) (2021)
- [Emotion-aware Chat Machine: Automatic Emotional Response Generation for Human-like Emotional Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03044/) (2021)
- [Harnessing Large Language Models' Empathetic Response Generation Capabilities for Online Mental Health Counselling Support](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08017/) (2023)
- [MIRACLE: Towards Personalized Dialogue Generation with Latent-Space Multiple Personal Attribute Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.18342/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [A Survey of Large Language Models in Psychotherapy: Current Landscape and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.11095/) (2025)
- [Preference Learning Unlocks LLMs' Psycho-Counseling Skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19731/) (2025)
- [Interaction Protocol Shapes Moral Judgment in Multi-Agent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10002/) (2025)
- [Multi-Agent Debate Strategies: Survey, Taxonomy, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.26212/) (2026)
- [MindTailor: Personalized Emotional Support via Post History-Grounded Case Formulation and Collaborative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.21930/) (2026)
- [Copewell: A Multi-Agent Swarm Architecture for Equitable Mental Wellness Support](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.02245/) (2026)
- [From Pattern Recognizers to Personalized Companions: A Survey of Large Language Models in Mental Health](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.25186/) (2026)
- [MACBT: A Multi-Agent Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Decision Support System with Longitudinal Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.30939/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As mental health issues globally escalate, there is a tremendous need for advanced digital support systems. We introduce MentalAgora, a novel framework employing large language models enhanced by interaction between multiple agents for tailored mental health support. This framework operates through three stages: strategic debating, tailored counselor creation, and response generation, enabling the dynamic customization of responses based on individual user preferences and therapeutic needs. We conduct experiments utilizing a high-quality evaluation dataset TherapyTalk crafted with mental health professionals, shwoing that MentalAgora generates expert-aligned and user preference-enhanced responses. Our evaluations, including experiments and user studies, demonstrate that MentalAgora aligns with professional standards and effectively meets user preferences, setting a new benchmark for digital mental health interventions.