{"ID":2873307,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06393","arxiv_id":"2509.06393","title":"Talking to an AI Mirror: Designing Self-Clone Chatbots for Enhanced Engagement in Digital Mental Health Support","abstract":"Mental health conversational agents have the potential to deliver valuable therapeutic impact, but low user engagement remains a critical barrier hindering their efficacy. Existing therapeutic approaches have leveraged clients' internal dialogues (e.g., journaling, talking to an empty chair) to enhance engagement through accountable, self-sourced support. Inspired by these, we designed novel AI-driven self-clone chatbots that replicate users' support strategies and conversational patterns to improve therapeutic engagement through externalized meaningful self-conversation. Validated through a semi-controlled experiment (N=180), significantly higher emotional and cognitive engagement was demonstrated with self-clone chatbots than a chatbot with a generic counselor persona. Our findings highlight self-clone believability as a mediator and emphasize the balance required in maintaining convincing self-representation while creating positive interactions. This study contributes to AI-based mental health interventions by introducing and evaluating self-clones as a promising approach to increasing user engagement, while exploring implications for their application in mental health care.","short_abstract":"Mental health conversational agents have the potential to deliver valuable therapeutic impact, but low user engagement remains a critical barrier hindering their efficacy. Existing therapeutic approaches have leveraged clients' internal dialogues (e.g., journaling, talking to an empty chair) to enhance engagement throu...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06393","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.06393v1","authors":"[\"Mehrnoosh Sadat Shirvani\",\"Jackie Liu\",\"Thomas Chao\",\"Suky Martinez\",\"Laura Brandt\",\"Ig-Jae Kim\",\"Dongwook Yoon\"]","published":"2025-09-08T07:27:35Z","proceeding":"cs.HC","tasks":"[\"cs.HC\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}