Visualizing conversations In group therapy: developing a tool to visualize conversations and improve therapist skills.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20403637

Society has a growing need for trained, insightful therapists. Group therapy is a popular and effective form of psychiatric treatment but documenting and reviewing large amounts of information from long group sessions is time-consuming, both for therapists and their supervisors. The increased availability and accuracy of automatically generated session transcripts gives designers an opportunity to design tools that smooth the way to clearer insight for therapists and improved care for patients. This thesis introduces prototypes for a visualization tool to help therapists and their supervisors explore patterns, conversation topics, dynamics in group therapy. The tool will allow users to search session transcripts, view outcome trends for individuals and groups, and visualize group dynamics over time. It is my hope that the work presented in this thesis will not only be considered in the context of mental healthcare, but will serve as a springboard for designers to experiment and visualize group conversations in a variety of contexts. Funding for the preparation of this thesis was provided by the National Institute of Mental Health under award 1-R56-MH-118550-01.--Author's abstract