MentalAgora: A Gateway to Advanced Personalized Care in Mental Health through Multi-Agent Debating and Attribute Control

Abstract: As mental health issues globally escalate, there is a tremendous need for advanced digital support systems. We introduce MentalAgora, a novel framework employing LLMs enhanced by interaction between multiple agents for tailored mental health support. This framework operates through three stages: strategic debating, tailored counselor creation, and response generation, enabling the dynamic customization of responses based on individual user preferences and therapeutic needs. We conduct experiments utilizing a high-quality evaluation dataset TherapyTalk crafted with mental health professionals, shwoing that MentalAgora generates expert-aligned and user preference-enhanced responses. Our evaluations, including experiments and user studies, demonstrate that MentalAgora aligns with professional standards and effectively meets user preferences, setting a new benchmark for digital mental health interventions.