ArticleNPJ digital medicine2026
A guided chatbot-based psychological intervention for psychologically distressed older adolescents and young adults: a randomised clinical trial in Jordan.
Article in NPJ digital medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
15 authors.
Funding
Abstract
This randomised controlled trial compared a 10-session chatbot intervention with 5 weekly brief support calls (STARS) to enhanced usual care (EUC) in distressed young adults in Jordan (N = 344). Primary outcome was change in anxiety and depression severity assessed at baseline by the Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL), 1-week posttreatment, and 3 months after treatment (primary outcome timepoint), as well as secondary outcome measures of psychological distress, personally identified problems, functional impairment, wellbeing and perceived agency. At the 3-month assessment, relative to EUC participants enrolled in STARS reported greater reductions of anxiety (effect size, 0.70) and depression (size, 0.61), as well as greater reductions in psychological distress, personally identified problems, functional impairment and greater improvement in wellbeing and sense of agency. Similar levels of efficacy were retained even for those with more severe symptom levels. This guided chatbot offers a scalable psychological intervention that can be implemented to increase access to evidence-based mental health care. Trial Registration: The trial was prospectively registered on ISRCTN on 02/11/2022 ( https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN19217696 ).
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.