Mental Health Promotion and Prevention of Adolescent Depression through a Chatbot

Abstract

                Mental health is an important factor associating with all individuals, especially adolescence. Teenagers not only have to manipulate with their different feelings but also expectations from families and relationship problems. Social media has a big role on each day of teenagers. For instance, its capability of preventing or reducing the risk of mental health problems. The purpose of this research was to analyze the experiences of teenagers regarding the promotion of mental health and prevention of Major Depressive Disorder and to design a chatbot for improving mental health and averting depression of adolescents, as adolescents nowadays access to technology more than in the past. The applications of information technology influence their communication as well, since it allows them to communicate with others more than their face-to-face routine. Basing on these behavioral changes due to technological advancements, chatbot was selected as an approach for accessing teenagers’ lives. This study is a User Experience and Design Research with 2 main phases involved: the Teenager Experience Analysis phase and the Design Thinking phase. During the Teenager Experience Analysis phase, a documentary was viewed by 20 teenagers consisting of 10 from the lower secondary level and the other 10 from the upper secondary level. During the Design Thinking phase, the prototypic chatbot was developed in line with the given context. Data collection methods are designed and evaluated in terms of appropriateness by professionals in Mental Health, Health Promotion, Development of Learning in Teenagers, Design Research, and Computer Science field. After data is collected from 40 adolescents and analyzed, the result reveals that the trend of teenagers receiving mental health counseling services is higher. Teenagers demand to talk and be advised through digital media. The teenagers engaged in health counseling services spend their time between 2 to 6 hours per day on the LINE Application. Since teenagers expect chatbot to be their emotional support and respond advices immediately, chatbot is designed to serve their needs. For the developed chatbot which is based on the LINE Application is well suited for mental health promotion and effectively prevents Major Depressive Disorder in adolescents as well.