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arXiv · 2609.30939

MACBT: A Multi-Agent Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Decision Support System with Longitudinal Memory

Abstract

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based first-line treatment for depression, yet its scale is constrained by the time clinicians spend on pre-session preparation, post-session documentation, and longitudinal cognitive-pathology tracking. We present a clinician-facing AI decision-support system that combines a multi-agent CBT framework (MACBT) with a CBT-specific longitudinal memory module (CD Memory). MACBT encodes the five-stage CBT workflow (assessment, Socratic questioning, cognitive restructuring, behavioral experiments, and treatment monitoring) into five collaborative agents. CD Memory tracks cognitive-distortion type, frequency, severity, and restructuring efficacy across sessions to generate pre-session pathology reports and intervention-priority recommendations. We construct a Chinese CBT dialogue corpus via dual-role large language model simulation and train a Qwen3-14B backbone with supervised fine-tuning and direct preference optimization. Evaluation with GPT-4 judges shows MACBT outperforms MeChat, SoulChat, PsyChat, and CPsyCounX in professionalism (2.62) and clinical authenticity (2.25). The full memory-augmented system further improves session quality by 12.6% and achieves a longitudinal mean of 2.29 on cross-session continuity, intervention progression, and personalization.

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De Jiang, Shuo Zhang, Weiwei Liao, Jianying Zhang, Chuanhui Yu, Hongen Liao, Kehong Yuan. 2026-09-25. MACBT: A Multi-Agent Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Decision Support System with Longitudinal Memory. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.30939

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