Online counselling chatbot to provide immediate counselling support

Abstract

Chatbots have been rapidly increasing in popularity across several industries such as banking and e-commerce. They have proven to be very cost and time-efficient. This project aims to utilize chatbots for a greater purpose, such as saving human lives and providing assistance in the medical field. The chatbot developed in this project will be targeted to assist students who suffer from mental health problems. Although educational institutions provide student counselling services, the number of cases of students having mental health problems continue to rise. This is largely due to the lack of knowledge and understanding on the impact of mental health problems. Therefore, this chatbot aims to help students by providing online counselling sessions.

In this project, Mona the chatbot will assess and detect students showing high risk behaviour. It is capable of alerting a real-time human counsellor immediately upon such an encounter. The chatbot will also provide services such as booking an appointment with a human counsellor. Moreover, the chatbot will be able to conduct Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9) and assess the person interacting with the chatbot, similar to the standard procedures followed in a real-life counselling session. The chatbot aims to provide immediate and 24/7 guidance to students who are in distress.