Depression affects approximately 15% of the US population, and is recognized as an important risk factor for poor outcomes among patients with various illnesses. Automated health education and behavior change programs have the potential to help address many of the shortcomings in health care. However, the role of these systems in the care of patients with depression has been insufficiently examined. In the current study, we sought to evaluate how hospitalized medical patients would respond to a computer animated conversational agent that has been developed to provide information in an empathic fashion about a patient's hospital discharge plan. In particular, we sought to examine how patients who have a high level of depressive symptoms respond to this system. Therapeutic alliance-the trust and belief that a patient and provider have in working together to achieve a desired therapeutic outcome- was used as the primary outcome measure, since it has been shown to be important in predicting outcomes across a wide range of health problems, including depression. In an evaluation of 139 hospital patients who interacted with the agent at the time of discharge, all patients, regardless of depressive symptoms, rated the agent very high on measures of satisfaction and ease of use, and most preferred receiving their discharge information from the agent compared to their doctors or nurses in the hospital. In addition, we found that patients with symptoms indicative of major depression rated the agent significantly higher on therapeutic alliance compared to patients who did not have major depressive symptoms. We conclude that empathic agents represent a promising technology for patient assessment, education and counseling for those most in need of comfort and caring in the inpatient setting.

中文翻译：

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患有抑郁症状的医院患者对关系代理的反应。


抑郁症影响着大约 15% 的美国人口，被认为是各种疾病患者预后不良的重要危险因素。自动化健康教育和行为改变计划有可能帮助解决医疗保健中的许多缺点。然而，这些系统在抑郁症患者护理中的作用尚未得到充分研究。在当前的研究中，我们试图评估住院患者对计算机动画对话代理的反应，该代理已开发用于以移情方式提供有关患者出院计划的信息。特别是，我们试图研究患有严重抑郁症状的患者对该系统的反应。治疗联盟——患者和提供者共同努力实现预期治疗结果的信任和信念——被用作主要结果衡量标准，因为它已被证明在预测各种健康问题的结果方面很重要，包括抑郁症。在对 139 名在出院时与该代理互动的医院患者进行的评估中，所有患者，无论抑郁症状如何，在满意度和易用性方面对该代理的评价都非常高，并且最喜欢从代理那里接收出院信息与医院的医生或护士相比。此外，我们发现，与没有重度抑郁症状的患者相比，有重度抑郁症状的患者对治疗联盟的评价显着更高。 我们的结论是，共情代理代表了一种很有前途的技术，可以为住院环境中最需要安慰和护理的人提供患者评估、教育和咨询。