Designing a Psychotherapy Support Robot for Young Children Diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

@inproceedings{Mohan26-HRILBR-Psychotherapy,
  title = {Designing a Psychotherapy Support Robot for Young Children Diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)},
  abstract = {The gold-standard treatment for children diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is therapist-guided cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which includes exposure and response prevention (ERP) sessions that teach children to overcome compulsive responses when exposed to their anxiety-inducing triggers. CBT requires children to report frequent self-assessments of tension during both therapist-supported and therapist-free self-management ERP sessions. Videoconferencing-delivered CBT (vCBT) enables a psychotherapist to treat a child remotely in their home, where OCD symptoms often arise, but these remote therapeutic interactions lack physical presence and can be challenging to run. We propose using a robot as an input/output device during vCBT for young children diagnosed with OCD, and we introduce a stationary table-top koala robot for this application. We further describe the first of three planned participatory design phases: a co-design study comprising two sessions where child and adolescent psychotherapists role-played vCBT ERP exercises with this robot to help define its role.},
  pages = {1--6},
  howpublished = {Late-Breaking Report (LBR) (6 pages) accepted to HRI},
  address = {Edinburgh, UK},
  month = mar,
  year = {2026},
  note = {Mayumi Mohan and Rachael L'Orsa contributed equally to this publication},
  author = {Mohan, Mayumi and L'Orsa, Rachael and Gr{\"u}ninger, Felix and Stollhof, Bernadette-Marie and Klein, Carolin Sarah and Dinauer, Raphael and Burns, Rachael Bevill and Renner, Tobias J. and Hollmann, Karsten and Kuchenbecker, Katherine J.},
  doi = {10.1145/3776734.3794522},
  month_numeric = {3}
}