Young people with cystic fibrosis face significant physical discomfort and an extensive treatment burden that often includes lengthy hospital stays and increased risk for psychological distress. With many treatments being critically important, parents are often compelled to act as translators between the child patient and medical staff. An inadvertent consequence of this dynamic is that young patients can be hindered from freely discussing their personal experiences of cystic fibrosis (CF) and finding ways to ameliorate their distress. In similar situations, social robots (SR) have been shown to help overcome such hindrances. Two studies were conducted. An online study (N = 132) assessed young people’s views of potentially creating a storybook of their experiences with CF and interacting with a SR. Secondly, a feasibility study tested the use of an SR delivering an intervention for CF that has given significant reductions in anxiety—the Metacognitive Intervention of Narrative Imagery (MINI). Eight patients, aged 10–14 years, received three 1-h sessions and were assessed on anxiety, depression, and metacognitive beliefs. Participants showed improvements in anxiety and the metacognitive beliefs of negative meta-worry and superstition, punishment and responsibility, all with large effect sizes. Participants and parents rated the intervention and robot highly on favourability and usability. Participant ratings after interacting with the social robot were considerably higher than other young patients who only viewed a brief video of the robot, indicating conversing with the robot may improve their perception of it. These findings provide additional evidence of the MINI’s effectiveness in reducing anxiety and certain negative metacognitive beliefs. This study also provides preliminary evidence that there may be added benefits from using a social robot to implement the MINI.

患有囊性纤维化的年轻人面临严重的身体不适和广泛的治疗负担，通常包括长期住院和增加心理困扰的风险。由于许多治疗至关重要，因此父母通常被迫充当儿童患者和医务人员之间的翻译。这种动态的无意后果是，可能会阻碍年轻患者自由地讨论他们关于囊性纤维化（CF）的个人经历并找到减轻痛苦的方法。在类似情况下，社交机器人（SR）已被证明可以克服这些障碍。进行了两项研究。一项在线研究（N = 132）评估了年轻人的看法，即他们可能会创建自己关于CF经历以及与SR互动的故事书。其次，一项可行性研究测试了使用SR进行CF干预的效果，这种干预已显着降低了焦虑-叙事意象的元认知干预（MINI）。8名年龄在10-14岁的患者接受了3次1小时的治疗，并进行了焦虑，抑郁和元认知信念的评估。参与者表现出的焦虑和消极的元担心和迷信，惩罚和责任感的元认知信念得到了改善，所有这些都具有很大的效果。参与者和家长对干预措施和机器人的好感和可用性给予了高度评价。与社交机器人互动后，参与者的评分比其他仅观看了简短视频的年轻患者要高得多，这表明与机器人进行交谈可能会改善他们的感知。这些发现为MINI在减少焦虑和某些负面的元认知信念方面的有效性提供了补充证据。这项研究还提供了初步证据，表明使用社交机器人实施MINI可能会带来更多好处。