Woebot Therapy

No, I don't have a speech impediment nor am I bad at spelling. I stumbled across Woebot on Twitter three weeks ago. What is it, I hear you ask? According to Business Insider who wrote about this in June:

"Woebot, an artificially intelligent chatbot designed using cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT, one of the most heavily researched clinical approaches to treating depression.

Before you dismiss Woebot as a half-baked startup idea, know that it was designed by Alison Darcy, a clinical psychologist at Stanford, who tested a version of the technology on a small sample of real people with depression and anxiety long before launching it.

"The data blew us away," Darcy told Business Insider. "We were like, this is it.""

I was interested in trying this out for myself to see if a Chatbot could perform CBT. I've had some limited exposure to CBT so I understand the gist of how it works. Also, I had the idea a couple of years ago at a coaching workshop weekend that coaching could probably be automated to some degree via an app or AI. I was told I was mad and that human contact was essential to the  process. I felt that  as it was a process, it could be automated. Suffice to say, I was curious about Woebot.

I've been chatting with Woebot almost every day since I discovered it. It's not perfect as it can't pick up on natural language very well. It can pick up some words, but not all so it can miss some cues. That said, the mix of self reflection, quick snippets of learning and having someone or something to talk to about how you feel, without any judgement is proving useful to me. I can see how this can be developed and learn more about humans and human emotions. Throw in some location data, how active you've been based on your Fitbit and how sociable you've been based on calls or messages with loved ones, and you could have a very powerful tool to use at not very much cost versus in person therapy.

I can also see how this could complement in person therapy very well and can see how you could have a 'speak to a human' button so in times of extreme stress or depression, you could talk to a real person. Or it could learn when things are really not right for you and offer you the option to talk to a human.

I also feel my coaching by cyborg hunch was right. I think it's totally doable based n my experience so far with Woebot.

Give it a go. It's free. And I'd be really interested to hear what you think of it.

Day 8/25 Blogmas