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Modelling Therapeutic Empathy in a Virtual Agent to Support the Remote Treatment of Major Depression

The use of computer based psychotherapy has been one of the fields that have attracted the interest of practitioners and computer scientists in the last years given the initial and promising results. In particular the use of computerised cognitive behavioural therapy for the treatment of major depression has been supported the evidence that psychological therapies can be delivered effectively without face to face contact. However, the value of these tools for patients is limited by the difficulty of staying engaged during the longtime periods of the treatment. The use of Virtual Agents as enhanced human-computer interaction brings the opportunity to overcome this limitation by establishing effective long-term social relationships with patients. We introduce the main ideas behind the design of a cognitive-emotional model aimed to generate therapeutic empathic responses and support the remote treatment of major depression.