Papers for

mental health support teams

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Adhd community shares time management challenges and coping strategies

r/ADHD: Community-Based Understandings of Time Management Challenges in Digital Environments

Abstract: Community accounts of ADHD can complement clinical understandings by foregrounding members' own definitions of time-management difficulties and support. We used human-led, LLM-assisted thematic analysis to examine 5,379 relevant r/ADHD posts from 2020 to 2025. Across five challenge and nine strategy themes, members described difficulties beginning intended tasks, disengaging from digital media, and sustaining support. Tools often demanded the self-regulation they were meant to support, while lost time and tool breakdown carried guilt and self-blame. Members drew on people, routines, and environments alongside digital tools, often seeking advice and recognition from peers. These accounts broaden the design problem to include the practical and emotional work of sustaining support. They motivate tools that reduce this burden and evaluations that consider recovery after distraction and emotional costs alongside task outcomes.

Thu 8 OctHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
People with ADHD often struggle to start tasks, stop using digital distractions, and keep help going. The authors looked at thousands of posts on a Reddit community where people with ADHD talk about these problems. They found that many tools meant to help require too much self-control and cause guilt when things go wrong. People don’t just rely on apps but also on routines, friends, and changing their environment, showing that managing time is also about emotional support. These insights suggest new tools should focus on making support easier to keep up and consider feelings after getting distracted.
Open → 2610.12629v1

Multi-task language model improves suicide risk assessment on social media

Explainable Suicide Risk Assessment on Social Media with Multi-Task QLoRA

Abstract: Explainable suicide-risk assessment requires models not only to estimate risk severity, but also to identify supporting language and the risk and protective factors expressed in a post. We present our system for the IEEE BigData 2026 Cup on Explainable Suicide Risk Assessment on Social Media, which addresses three tasks: risk-level classification, evidence phrase extraction, and multi-label factor identification. Our approach adapts Qwen2.5-Instruct models using quantized low-rank adaptation (QLoRA) and an answer-masked causal language-model objective. We jointly train across all three tasks for risk classification, jointly train on Tasks~1a and 1b for evidence extraction, and adapt Task~2 separately for factor identification. We also tailor aggregation to each output: we average risk-level probabilities from the 32B and 72B models, combine evidence phrases through cross-fold consensus, and calibrate factor-specific decisions through rate matching based on out-of-fold operating points. On the official leaderboard, the final system achieved a composite score of 0.7738, with 0.8089 on Task~1 and 0.6919 on Task~2. Across the evaluated configurations, three-task training performed best for Task~1a, joint training on Tasks~1a and 1b performed best for Task~1b, and task-specific training performed best for Task~2. Probability averaging further improved Task~1a when component models had complementary errors. These findings highlight the value of tailoring both training objectives and aggregation strategies to the output structure of each task within a unified language-model framework.

Wed 30 SeptComputation and LanguageMachine Learning
The gist
Detecting suicide risk on social media is important but challenging. The authors built a computer program that not only judges how risky a post is but also points out exact words supporting that judgment and identifies factors that might increase or decrease the risk. They trained this program on three related tasks and combined different models to improve accuracy. Their system scored well in a public competition, showing that training for each part carefully and merging results smartly helps the program better explain its decisions.
Open → 2610.00610v1

AI companion disruptions linked to spikes in user distress

Disrupted Companionship: A Risk Assessment Framework and Cross-Platform Quantitative Analysis of Psychosocial Responses to AI Companion Disruptions

Abstract: AI companions can provide meaningful relationships, yet these relationships remain vulnerable to platform-initiated changes. We study AI companion disruptions: platform changes that alter or terminate users' ongoing companionship with an AI. We compile 30 disruption events across major platforms, develop a taxonomy of six disruption types, identify three broad reasons for disruption, and propose a risk-assessment framework comprising four dimensions: relational discontinuity, population vulnerability, communication deficit, and transition-support deficit. Using longitudinal Reddit data, we estimate community-level psychosocial responses with a hierarchical Bayesian interrupted time-series model incorporating predictive controls. Across events, disruption onset was associated with immediate increases in anxiety, stress, suicidal expression, and grief activation, with relational discontinuity and transition-support deficit being associated with more adverse immediate responses across several outcomes. Our findings provide a cross-platform characterization of AI companion disruptions, quantitative evidence of their psychosocial impacts, and a prospective framework for assessing their potential risks before implementation.

Tue 15 SeptHuman-Computer InteractionComputation and LanguageComputers and Society
The gist
AI companions can form meaningful bonds with people, but when platforms change or end these relationships suddenly, it can upset users. The authors studied 30 cases of such disruptions from different platforms and grouped them into types and causes. They found that these changes often increase anxiety, stress, grief, and even suicidal thoughts in user communities on Reddit. They also created a framework to assess the risks of these disruptions before they happen, helping predict their emotional impact.
Open → 2609.16907v1