CAIA in Practice: Field Evaluation of an AI-Assisted Support System for Text-Based Online Counselling
Philipp Steigerwald, Nico Bienlein, Jennifer Burghardt, Mara Stieler, Robert Lehmann, Jens Albrecht
Abstract
Rising global demand for mental health support creates significant service delivery challenges, with asynchronous email counselling serving as a crucial low-threshold channel for accessing care. This paper presents CAIA, a co-designed AI-based tool suite that demonstrates responsible AI integration into counselling practice through seven LLM-driven functions enhanced by retrieval-augmented generation. A field evaluation involved 34 professional counsellors conducting authentic sessions with trained student counsellees (36 threads, 321 messages, 1,257 AI outputs). User behaviour analysis confirms substantial adoption, revealing that professional autonomy and information accuracy are decisive for sustained acceptance, with counsellors particularly valuing interpretive functionalities that provide new perspectives and stimulate professional reflection.
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Classified with taxonomy v2 on Sat, 5 Sept 2026.