# EmoTrace: An Emotion Trajectory-Centered Framework for Psychological Support Dialogue Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.23648 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.23648/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Jul 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [LlamaFactory: Unified Efficient Fine-Tuning of 100+ Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.13372/) (2024)
- [ChatGLM: A Family of Large Language Models from GLM-130B to GLM-4 All Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12793/) (2024)
- [Towards Emotional Support Dialog Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01144/) (2021)
- [Persuasion for Good: Towards a Personalized Persuasive Dialogue System for Social Good](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06725/) (2019)
- [SoulChat: Improving LLMs' Empathy, Listening, and Comfort Abilities through Fine-tuning with Multi-turn Empathy Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.00273/) (2023)
- [PsyQA: A Chinese Dataset for Generating Long Counseling Text for Mental Health Support](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01702/) (2021)
- [CPsyCoun: A Report-based Multi-turn Dialogue Reconstruction and Evaluation Framework for Chinese Psychological Counseling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16433/) (2024)
- [Cactus: Towards Psychological Counseling Conversations using Cognitive Behavioral Theory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03103/) (2024)
- [PsyDT: Using LLMs to Construct the Digital Twin of Psychological Counselor with Personalized Counseling Style for Psychological Counseling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13660/) (2024)
- [KokoroChat: A Japanese Psychological Counseling Dialogue Dataset Collected via Role-Playing by Trained Counselors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01357/) (2025)
- [Crisp: Cognitive Restructuring of Negative Thoughts through Multi-turn Supportive Dialogues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17238/) (2025)
- [PsyPlay: Personality-Infused Role-Playing Conversational Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.03821/) (2025)
- [TheraMind: A Strategic and Adaptive Agent for Longitudinal Psychological Counseling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.25758/) (2025)
- [WiseMind: a knowledge-guided multi-agent framework for accurate and empathetic psychiatric diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20689/) (2025)
- [DiaCBT: A Long-Periodic Dialogue Corpus Guided by Cognitive Conceptualization Diagram for CBT-based Psychological Counseling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02999/) (2025)
- [GDPR Compliant Collection of Therapist-Patient-Dialogues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12360/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Using large language models (LLMs) to assist psychological counseling is an important task in the field of natural language processing. The construction of high-quality psychological support dialogue corpora serves as a critical foundation for training counseling-oriented conversational models. However, existing data generation approaches generally suffer from several limitations, including emotionally stable seekers, limited variation in emotional dynamics, and a high degree of compliance with counselors' guidance. These issues result in LLM that lack the capability to effectively respond to emotionally unstable scenarios. In addition, counselor responses are typically driven by problem-solving objectives, thereby overlooking the role of emotion-focused interaction, which are essential in psychological counseling. To address these gaps, we propose EmoTrace, a multi-turn dialogue corpus generation framework centered on modeling seekers' emotional trajectories. we construct seekers' cognitive profile and introduce a seeker module with emotional schemas and an associated activation mechanism, a counselor module, and an emotional trajectory control module, thereby enhancing the layering of the seeker's emotional expression and the counselor's targeted empathic expression. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms existing approaches in terms of emotional richness and empathy quality.