| Abstract |
Previous research indicates that self-help therapy is an effective method to
prevent and treat unipolar depression. While web-based self-help therapy has
many advantages, there are also disadvantages to self-help therapy, such as
that it misses the possibility to regard the body language of the user, and
the lack of personal feedback on the user responses. This study presents a
virtual agent that guides the user through the Beck Depression Inventory
(BDI) questionnaire, which is used to measure the severity of depression.
The agent responds empathically to the answers given by the user, by
changing its facial expression. This resembles face to face therapy more
than existing web-based self-help therapies. A pilot experiment indicates
that the virtual agent has added value for this application. |