Abstract
One in three university students experiences mental health problems during their study. A similar percentage leaves higher education without obtaining the degree for which they enrolled. Research suggests that both mental health problems and academic underperformance could be caused by students lacking control and purpose while they are adjusting to tertiary education. Currently, universities are not designed to cater to all the personal needs and mental health problems of large numbers of students at the start of their studies. Within the literature aimed at preventing mental health problems among students (e.g., anxiety or depression), digital forms of therapy recently have been suggested as potentially scalable solutions to address these problems. Integrative psychological artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of a chatbot, for example, shows great potential as an evidence-based solution. At the same time, within the literature aimed at improving academic performance, the online life-crafting intervention in which students write about values and passions, goals, and goal-attainment plans has shown to improve the academic performance and retention rates of students. Because the life-crafting intervention is delivered through the curriculum and doesn’t bear the stigma that is associated with therapy, it can reach larger populations of students. But life-crafting lacks the means for follow-up or the interactiveness that online AI-guided therapy can offer. In this narrative review, we propose to integrate the current literature on chatbot interventions aimed at the mental health of students with research about a life-crafting intervention that uses an inclusive curriculum-wide approach. When a chatbot asks students to prioritize both academic as well as social and health-related goals and provides personalized follow-up coaching, this can prevent -often interrelated- academic and mental health problems. Right on-time delivery, and personalized follow-up questions enhance the effects of both -originally separated- intervention types. Research on this new combination of interventions should use design principles that increase user-friendliness and monitor the technology acceptance of its participants.
Highlights
One in three students leaves higher education without attaining the higher education degree for which they enrolled (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2010, 2013, 2019)
We describe how we propose to integrate life crafting into an artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced mental health chatbot
As many students struggle with academic underperformance and mental health problems during their transition to tertiary education, we sought to outline possible solutions that involve both the use of contemporary AI solutions and combine this with the latest insights from effective positive psychology interventions, a promising life-crafting intervention
Summary
One in three students leaves higher education without attaining the higher education degree for which they enrolled (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2010, 2013, 2019). Does the first year of college come with a relatively high risk of not succeeding academically, it coincides with a higher risk of mental health-related issues and subsequently low levels of well-being (Hunt and Eisenberg, 2010; Auerbach et al, 2018; Bruffaerts et al, 2018; Choi, 2018). Mental health and well-being are related and contribute to the decrease of students’ academic performance (in the current study defined as student retention, grade point average and obtained credits Bruffaerts et al, 2018). College students with mental health problems are twice as likely to drop out (Kessler et al, 1995; Hartley, 2010), and depression and suicidal thoughts relate to a lower GPA (Mortier et al, 2015; De Luca et al, 2016).
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