International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056
Volume: 08 Issue: 06 | June 2021 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072
© 2021, IRJET | Impact Factor value: 7.529 | ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal | Page 4530
Implementation of Mental Health Chatbot using RASA
Ritik Kesharwani
1
, Vishvesh Dumbre
2
, Aniket Patole
3
, Harmeet Khanuja
4
1-4
UG Students, Dept. of Computer Engineering, Marathawada Mitra Mandal’s College of Engineering, Pune,
Maharashtra, India
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Abstract - Psykh is a mental health conversational
AI chatbot that can help people from depression,
anxiety, stress, etc. This chatbot web application is
mainly built for introverts who have trouble taking
help from a mental health professional or their family.
These past few years have taught us how important
mental health is far more then your physical health.
Psycho-therapists have very high costs per session and
a middle class man cannot afford to put their money
on things that are not their priority. Psykh is here for
the people to use whenever they want without any
cost. It can act as your friend and talk with you
whenever you need it. Psykh helps users tackle
negative thoughts and emotions. It determines the
basic emotions of a user from the natural language
input using natural language processing and the tools
of RASA (Open Source Conversational AI framework).
An attempt has been made to help people with mental
health issues as they are hesitant in sharing these
thoughts and emotions with other people.
Key Words: Natural language Processing, Chatbot,
Artificial Intelligence, Rasa, Machine learning, Mental
Health Counselling, Natural language Understanding,
Psychiatric counselling.
1.INTRODUCTION
The COVID-19 global pandemic has had a profound
impact on our mental health and made us aware of
how important it is. A study examining suicidal
behaviour during India’s COVID-19 lockdown by the
International Journal of Mental Health Systems has
found a 67.7% increase in online news media reports
of suicidal behaviour [1]. Over 60% reported
disruptions to mental health services for vulnerable
people, including children and adolescents (72%),
older adults (70%), and women requiring antenatal
or postnatal services (61%) [2]. 67% saw disruptions
to counselling and psychotherapy; 65% to critical
harm reduction services; and 45% to opioid agonist
maintenance treatment for opioid dependence[2].
More than a third(35%) reported disruptions to
emergency interventions, including those for people
experiencing prolonged seizures; severe substance
use withdrawal syndromes; and delirium, often a
sign of a serious underlying medical condition [2].
30% reported disruptions to access to medications
for mental, neurological, and substance use disorders
[2]. Around three-quarters reported at least partial
disruptions to school and workplace mental health
services (78% and 75% respectively) [2]. 70% of
people have had more stress and anxiety at work this
year than any other previous year [10]. This
increased stress and anxiety have negatively
impacted the mental health of 78% of the global
workforce, causing more stress (38%), a lack of
work-life balance (35%), burnout (25%), depression
from a lack of socialization (25%), and loneliness
(14%) [10].
Mental disorders are usually treated by
psychotherapists. However, there is a global shortage
of human resources for delivering such mental health
services. In developed countries, there are nine
psychiatrists per 100,000 people available, while in
developing countries there is one psychiatrist per ten
million people [3]. According to the WHO, about 45%
of people in developed countries and 15% of people
in developing countries have access to psychiatric
services [3]. This shortage and expense issues have
made the AI industry take matters into its hand.
Building conversational AI systems to create a
humanlike AI has been one of the leading research
topics to date. Creating a virtual psychotherapist AI is
one step closer to a humanlike AI dream. The chatbot
simulates a realistic conversation partner by giving
the user appropriate answers in a language that he or
she understands. Chatbots were mainly used in
marketing to enhance customer experiences.
Some people show hesitation in sharing their
sorrows or problems with other people because of
the risk of another person judging them or them
getting mocked by another person. So, in such cases,
chatbots or dialogue systems can be used to get the
normal informative needs of the user by acting as a
friend or a well-wisher. As professional assistants
like counselling are expensive, people are looking
towards a more reliable and efficient solution to