No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
Background: Despite the clinical potential of digital interventions for young adults with depression, low engagement remains a persistent challenge. A conversational therapeutic companion agent (TCA) can foster a digital therapeutic alliance to address this barrier. Objective: This study aimed to develop a Wizard-of-Oz TCA prototype integrating behavioral activation, ecological momentary assessment/intervention (EMA/EMI), and gamification, and to evaluate its proof-of-concept feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary clinical efficacy for young adults with depressive symptoms. Methods: 58 Korean young adults ages 20 to 39 (50.0% female) with subclinical to moderately severe depressive symptoms (Patient Health Questionnaire-9) were recruited. The intervention group (n=29) interacted with the TCA for six weeks, while a frequency-matched passive control group (n=29) continued usual routines. Primary outcomes were feasibility (adherence) and acceptability (satisfaction). Secondary outcomes for efficacy (Beck Depression Inventory-II, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, Quality-of-Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction Questionnaire-Short Form) were assessed biweekly. Results: benchmarks. Exploratory analyses indicated the intervention group showed significantly greater reductions in depressive symptoms and improvements in quality of life compared to controls. Conclusions: The TCA-based intervention is feasible and acceptable, successfully cultivating a digital therapeutic alliance. While preliminary clinical signals are promising, future fully powered randomized controlled trials are required to definitively establish clinical efficacy.
Loading…
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 2 citations exist upstream.
Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.