# Depression Diagnosis Dialogue Simulation: Self-improving Psychiatrist with Tertiary Memory

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.15084 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.15084/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical synthetic data and agents, one of 13 directions in Synthetic data and self-improvement for LLMs.
- Builds on 24 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Sep 2024.

## Placed in

- Synthetic data and self-improvement for LLMs / [Medical synthetic data and agents](https://mlsanity.com/synth/medical-synthetic-data-and-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11366/) (2023)
- [AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08155/) (2023)
- [The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07864/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Very Long-Term Conversational Memory of LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17753/) (2024)
- [Character-LLM: A Trainable Agent for Role-Playing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10158/) (2023)
- [ChatDoctor: A Medical Chat Model Fine-Tuned on a Large Language Model Meta-AI (LLaMA) Using Medical Domain Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14070/) (2023)
- [Agent Hospital: A Simulacrum of Hospital with Evolvable Medical Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.02957/) (2024)
- [Prompting and Evaluating Large Language Models for Proactive Dialogues: Clarification, Target-guided, and Non-collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13626/) (2023)
- [Pride and Prejudice: LLM Amplifies Self-Bias in Self-Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11436/) (2024)
- [Understanding the Benefits and Challenges of Using Large Language Model-based Conversational Agents for Mental Well-being Support](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15810/) (2023)
- [Ask-before-Plan: Proactive Language Agents for Real-World Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12639/) (2024)
- [Can Large Language Models be Good Emotional Supporter? Mitigating Preference Bias on Emotional Support Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13211/) (2024)
- [Towards Human-centered Proactive Conversational Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12670/) (2024)
- [Knowledge-enhanced Mixed-initiative Dialogue System for Emotional Support Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10172/) (2023)
- [D4: a Chinese Dialogue Dataset for Depression-Diagnosis-Oriented Chat](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11764/) (2022)
- [Memory Sandbox: Transparent and Interactive Memory Management for Conversational Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01542/) (2023)
- [IBSEN: Director-Actor Agent Collaboration for Controllable and Interactive Drama Script Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01093/) (2024)
- [GPTCoach: Towards LLM-Based Physical Activity Coaching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06061/) (2024)
- [Leveraging Large Language Model as Simulated Patients for Clinical Education](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13066/) (2024)
- [LLM-Mini-CEX: Automatic Evaluation of Large Language Model for Diagnostic Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07635/) (2023)
- [DiagESC: Dialogue Synthesis for Integrating Depression Diagnosis into Emotional Support Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06044/) (2024)
- [Towards Reliable and Empathetic Depression-Diagnosis-Oriented Chats](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.05012/) (2024)
- [WundtGPT: Shaping Large Language Models To Be An Empathetic, Proactive Psychologist](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15474/) (2024)
- [Enhancing Depression-Diagnosis-Oriented Chat with Psychological State Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09717/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Towards a Design Guideline for RPA Evaluation: A Survey of Large Language Model-Based Role-Playing Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13012/) (2025)
- [AnnaAgent: Dynamic Evolution Agent System with Multi-Session Memory for Realistic Seeker Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00551/) (2025)
- [MobA: Multifaceted Memory-Enhanced Adaptive Planning for Efficient Mobile Task Automation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13757/) (2024)
- [A Survey of Large Language Models in Psychotherapy: Current Landscape and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.11095/) (2025)
- [The Last AI Built by Humans: Toward Genuine Recursive Self-Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.11873/) (2026)
- [WiseMind: a knowledge-guided multi-agent framework for accurate and empathetic psychiatric diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20689/) (2025)
- [Experience Makes Skillful: Enabling Generalizable Medical Agent Reasoning via Self-Evolving Skill Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09365/) (2026)
- [IEA: Amateur-Friendly Conversational Image Editing Agent via Three Stages of Multitask Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08016/) (2026)
- [Reviewing Clinical Knowledge in Medical Large Language Models: Training and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20988/) (2025)
- [From Medical Records to Diagnostic Dialogues: A Clinical-Grounded Approach and Dataset for Psychiatric Comorbidity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.25232/) (2025)
- [SSR: Can Simulated Patients Learn to Stigmatize Themselves? Modeling Self-Stigma through Internal Monologue](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08254/) (2026)
- [Reward Valuation in Large Language Models: Causal Induction of Anhedonia](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.06626/) (2026)
- [From Pattern Recognizers to Personalized Companions: A Survey of Large Language Models in Mental Health](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.25186/) (2026)
- [MERID: Multimodal Exploration via Recursive Self-Improvement Agents for Major Depression Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36235/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Mental health issues, particularly depressive disorders, present significant challenges in contemporary society, necessitating the development of effective automated diagnostic methods. This paper introduces the Agent Mental Clinic (AMC), a self-improving conversational agent system designed to enhance depression diagnosis through simulated dialogues between patient and psychiatrist agents. To enhance the dialogue quality and diagnosis accuracy, we design a psychiatrist agent consisting of a tertiary memory structure, a dialogue control and reflect plugin that acts as ``supervisor'' and a memory sampling module, fully leveraging the skills reflected by the psychiatrist agent, achieving great accuracy on depression risk and suicide risk diagnosis via conversation. Experiment results on datasets collected in real-life scenarios demonstrate that the system, simulating the procedure of training psychiatrists, can be a promising optimization method for aligning LLMs with real-life distribution in specific domains without modifying the weights of LLMs, even when only a few representative labeled cases are available.