Recursos de IoT e AI para intervenção psicológica sob os efeitos da sindemia

Abstract

The lack of technological resources for Mental Health distances society from accessing psychotherapeutic resources. That can perpetuate a status quo of psychological suffering, and the inaccessibility to Mental Health. This study adapted a psychotherapeutic intervention program, from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to a website to evaluate whether this intervention would reduce perceived psychological stress. The participants physiological stress was also measured before and after completing each exercise in the intervention program by means of a fit band measuring the stress function. Furthermore, verbal data were collected after the participants completed exercises at each stage of the program; these data were analyzed using IBM Cloud's Natural Language Processing, Watson. Thirty adult participants, aged between 18 and 60 years, were recruited (M=36.6). Simple randomization was done, and three groups were analyzed: control group; intervention group 1; and intervention group 2. The control group performed only the assessment from the Perceived Stress Scale PSS–10, twice. Control group 1 performed the PSS–10 in the pre-phase, accomplish the intervention program, and performed the PSS–10 again in the post. The results showed that statistically significant differences occurred in the means of the groups, for the final PSS–10 (p = 0.040; p < 0.05), suggesting that the intervention could influence the reduction of perceived psychological stress. Physiological stress data demonstrated high rates when the exercises concerned aspects of stress; there was also a reduction in the rate when the exercise described aspects of valued directions. The verbal data suggest that the participants were under the control of the intervention contingency as they related their answers transcribed about each exercise and applied theme in the intervention; mostly when the texts have negative connotations, because it was exactly related to the exercises on the experience that stress causes. With the results obtained in the present study, Acceptance and Commitment Therap proved again to be a relevant tool for problems of psychological stress, even without human interaction intervention. However, some aspects need to be reevaluated, especially in relation to the social variables, and the choices of exercises of psychotherapeutic practices without the presence of human interaction