Pai.ACT - An Artificial Intelligence Driven Chatbot Assisted ACT
Pai.ACT: A Deep-learning-powered, Smartphone-delivered, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Parents of Children With Special Needs: A Feasibility Study
Chinese University of Hong Kong
60 participants
Oct 1, 2023
INTERVENTIONAL
Conditions
Summary
Limited psychological support for parents of children with special needs in Hong Kong can profoundly impact the child rehabilitation process and the well-being of parent-child dyads. Leveraging previous evidence from our team's research, we have developed Pai.ACT, the first deep learning-based mental health advisory system for parents. Pai.ACT incorporates the counselling logic of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) through natural language processing, enabling parents to engage in human-like voice-to-text conversations and receive assessments and stepped-care mental health interventions, including guided self-help materials and real-time, individual-based counselling based on ACT. Following the research and development phases, we aim to kick off the utilisation of Pai.ACT by (1) pilot-testing its feasibility, acceptability, and potential efficacy in improving mental health outcomes for parents of children with special needs and (2) researching to determine the most optimal service model for parents by exploring their perceptions through focus group interviews. Pai.ACT offers accessible and comprehensive mental health services to all Chinese-speaking parents, addressing their psychological burden in caring for children with special needs. Pai.ACT could bring substantial and enduring societal benefits to Chinese-speaking families by integrating mental health support services for family caregivers with current child rehabilitation services and non-governmental organisations. Furthermore, this could contribute to reducing the public stigma attached to special needs children while increasing mental health awareness.
Eligibility
Inclusion Criteria4
- Primary caregivers who are Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong residents.
- The caregiver must cohabitate with the child with special needs.
- The child under the participant's care should be aged between 2-8 years. The child should be either diagnosed or suspected to have one of the developmental conditions such as ASD, ADHD, or DD. These conditions must be recognised by the Child Assessment Service of the Department of Health and conform to the DSM-5 criteria. The diagnosis or suspected diagnosis should be documented in the electronic medical record at the study hospital or the case profile record at the collaborating non-governmental organisations.
- Note: The age range of 2-8 years was selected due to the substantial impact of parenting on the developmental milestones of preschoolers and junior school-aged children.
Exclusion Criteria6
- Parents diagnosed with severe mental illnesses are excluded.
- Parents who are currently pregnant are excluded.
- Parents who are less than six months postpartum are excluded.
- Parents with a developmental disability that interferes with their ability to comprehend the program's content are excluded.
- Parents with cognitive, language, communication, visual, or hearing impairments or disorders that could impede their understanding of the intervention content are excluded.
- Parents currently participating in other psychosocial, psychoeducational, or parenting interventions are excluded.
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Interventions
The Pai.ACT mobile app is an innovative therapeutic tool that utilizes Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). It integrates a sophisticated algorithm to analyze self-reported data and conversation texts when the user interacts with the AI chatbot and identifies what psychological inflexibility processes are required to be the most essential to be addressed for process-matched ACT interventions. These interventions, including self-help modules and experiential exercises, are enhanced with dynamic animations and audio metaphors. The app also offers 4-6 video-based individual ACT sessions with a dedicated counseling team and a referral system for intensive psychological support, all underpinned by empirical evidence from a previous ACT trial in Hong Kong.
Both the Pai.ACT group and the control group will receive conventional familial support offered by the hospital's Children with Complexity Community Support Programme (CCCSP) and allied Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). This support encompasses disseminating educational content focused on the management of children's affective and behavioral manifestations.
Locations(2)
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NCT06086951