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@article{187124,
        author = {Shikha Dutta and Nidhi Chandrakar},
        title = {AI-Powered Chatbots for Mental Health Support},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2025},
        volume = {12},
        number = {6},
        pages = {5814-5826},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=187124},
        abstract = {The present research focuses on the design, development, and evaluation of an AI-powered general life assistant chatbot that integrates artificial intelligence, natural language processing (NLP), and modern web technologies to deliver intelligent, empathetic, and context-aware support across three major domains of daily life—health, productivity, and education. The study adopts a hybrid methodological approach combining system design, machine learning modeling, and user-centered interface development. The chatbot utilizes a modular architecture built with React, Node.js, and FastAPI, supported by MongoDB and Redis for data storage and caching, ensuring real-time responsiveness and scalability. Transformer-based NLP models are employed to enable intent recognition, contextual understanding, and adaptive dialogue generation. Testing and validation were conducted using precision, recall, F1-score, latency, and throughput metrics, along with user satisfaction surveys. Comparative benchmarking against existing chatbot frameworks such as Dialogflow and Rasa demonstrated the superior performance of the proposed system in terms of response accuracy (94.2%), mean latency (123.5 ms), and user satisfaction (4.3/5). The results confirm that the chatbot effectively bridges technical sophistication with human-centric interaction, providing personalized and ethically responsible assistance. Ethical safeguards, including GDPR and HIPAA compliance, data encryption, and anonymization, were embedded to ensure privacy and trust. Furthermore, a reinforcement-based feedback loop enables continuous learning and adaptation, enhancing long-term relevance. Overall, the research establishes that AI-driven chatbots, when designed with contextual intelligence, emotional empathy, and ethical responsibility, can serve as effective digital companions that support holistic human development in the fields of health management, productivity enhancement, and education.},
        keywords = {AI-powered chatbot; Natural language processing; Mental health support; Conversational agents; Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT); User-centered design; Transformer models; Machine learning; Digital well-being; Human–AI interaction; Real-time response systems},
        month = {November},
        }