Pai.ACT - An Artificial Intelligence Driven Chatbot Assisted ACT

INTRODUCTION

Children classified as having special needs encompass those with chronic developmental, behavioural, and emotional conditions requiring specialised and extended health services beyond those required by children in general. Common types of special needs in Hong Kong include autism spectrum disorders (ASD), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADHD), and developmental disabilities or delays. Notably, there has been a significant increase in the number of children with special needs in the region. In 2019, the Child Assessment Centre under the Department of Health reported a rise in newly diagnosed cases and referrals for specialty follow-up services for preschool-aged children, with annual growth ranging from 6.2% to 10.7%.

On a broader scale, Hong Kong offers a range of health and social services for families of children with special needs, but they are marked by prolonged waiting times for multidisciplinary assessments, diagnoses, and subsequent intensive rehabilitation services. This extended waiting period not only delays crucial support but also intensifies the psychological burden experienced by parents. Without a certified diagnosis from mental health professionals, parents face significant challenges in accessing public health services for their children's rehabilitation. The local mental health landscape predominantly focuses on severe mental illness, prioritising the children's needs over the psychological well-being of parents. Accessing mental health services becomes even more challenging due to caregiving demands, time constraints, geographic limitations, and a scarcity of providers with expertise in caring for special needs children. Self-stigma further impedes parents from seeking psychotherapeutic support, despite recognising its impact on their well-being and parenting behaviours. Notably, parents of special needs children exhibit higher levels of parenting stress and depressive symptoms compared to parents without special needs.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has recently emerged as a promising, low-intense psychotherapy for addressing parenting challenges. By practising core ACT skills like cognitive defusion, acceptance, and value clarification, parents can better navigate difficult parenting experiences and reconnect with their caregiving qualities. Extensive research supports the effectiveness of ACT in improving psychological well-being and reducing somatic complaints across diverse populations. Recent clinical trials targeting paediatric conditions such as asthma, ASD cerebral palsy, and acquired brain injury have shown significant reductions in parenting stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms. However, in-person delivery of ACT poses barriers, particularly for parents of children with special needs. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for virtual healthcare options, and smartphone-based ACT platforms provide a viable solution. Utilising smartphones allows convenient access to ACT interventions, accommodating parental caregiving responsibilities, overcoming traditional treatment limitations, and reducing resource requirements for healthcare systems. Studies indicate parents' interest and willingness to incorporate technology into their care, with smartphone-based ACT interventions demonstrating positive effects on parental well-being, psychological flexibility, mindfulness skills, and children's quality of life. Yet, challenges persist in maintaining user engagement in these publicly accessible mental health initiatives, with over 70% of individuals discontinuing use shortly after downloading.

Pai.ACT

To address these gaps, the current study proposes a pilot investigation of "Pai.ACT," a smartphone-based application designed to engage more than 1,000 Hong Kong-based parents. Funded by the Information and Technology Fund (ITF), Pai.ACT employs a conversational agent using voice-to-text capabilities to simulate ACT counsellors' responses in Cantonese. This application serves as a comprehensive digital ACT platform, offering multiple tiers of intervention, from self-help materials to personalized video conferencing sessions grounded in ACT principles. The platform's development incorporated analysis of an extensive dataset of over 10,000 tagged text instances from individual ACT sessions to train a deep-learning language model, facilitating precise psychotherapeutic interactions tailored to parents' needs.

STUDY AIMS AND HYPOTHESIS TO BE TESTED

The aim of this two-arm, repeated-measure, randomised controlled trial is to assess the feasibility, acceptability, and potential efficacy of a deep-learning, smartphone-enabled Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), referred to as Pai.ACT, is specifically designed for parents of children with special needs. This study seeks to determine whether this technological intervention can foster enhanced mental well-being for these parents over a three-month post-intervention period.

This study hypothesizes that the implementation of Pai.ACT will lead to substantial improvements in mental well-being and psychological flexibility for parents of children with special needs. Compared to the control group receiving treatment-as-usual (TAU), we anticipate the intervention group receiving Pai.ACT will significantly ameliorate their mental health status immediately after the intervention and at a three-month post-intervention follow-up. This will underscore the potential of Pai.ACT as an effective and accessible tool for psychological support and resilience-building in this population.