Exploring the Role of Mental Health Conversational Agents in Training Medical Students and Professionals: A Systematic Literature Review

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into mental health education and training (MHET) has become a promising solution to meet the increasing demand for skilled mental health professionals.This systematic review analyses 38 studies on AI-powered conversational agents (CAs) in MHET, selected from a total of 1003 studies published between 2019 and 2024.Following the PRISMA protocol, we reviewed papers from computer science, medicine, and interdisciplinary databases, assessing key aspects such as technological approaches, data characteristics, application areas, and evaluation methodologies.Our findings reveal that AI-based approaches, including Large Language Models (LLMs), dominate the field, with training as the application area being the most prevalent.These technologies show promise in simulating therapeutic interactions but face challenges such as limited public datasets, lack of standardised evaluation frameworks, and difficulty in ensuring authentic emotional responses, along with gaps in ethical considerations and clinical efficacy.This review presents a comprehensive framework for understanding the role of CAs in MHET while providing valuable recommendations to guide future research.