LongCounsel-8: A Benchmark Suite for Longitudinal Depression Tracking from Multi-Session Counseling Dialogues

2026-09-03

AI Summary

为解决多会话咨询对话中纵向追踪抑郁症状的问题，研究通过构建LongCounsel-8基准套件，采用基于个人资料的模拟、经验性状态构建等方法生成数据集。

Abstract

Tracking depression from multi-session counseling dialogues requires estimating both current symptom severity and how it changes across sessions. Yet progress on this task is constrained by the scarcity of longitudinal counseling data with standardized session-level depression labels. Existing resources typically provide either multi-session conversations without depression labels or labeled interviews in a single session. Building such a benchmark poses three challenges: maintaining longitudinal consistency and diversity, grounding symptom progression in empirical patterns, and expressing controlled depression states naturally without exposing target labels. To address these challenges, we introduce LongCounsel-8, a benchmark suite of three independently generated datasets totaling 7,749 five-session counseling trajectories, grounded in real-world client profiles, depression trajectories, symptom compositions, and counseling patterns. We combine profile-grounded simulation, empirically informed state construction, and indirect behavioral realization to address these challenges. Across the benchmark, simulated self-reports closely recover the controlled states, supporting label fidelity. Experiments on existing depression tracking methods reveal three key findings: (1) lower single-session score error does not guarantee accurate identification of trend, i.e., improvement or worsening; (2) existing methods are consistently less reliable on worsening trajectories; and (3) additional session history may reduce the accuracy of trend prediction. Together, these findings establish LongCounsel-8 as a foundation for advancing depression assessment from static, single-session prediction toward reliable longitudinal tracking of mental-health change.

Problem

• Longitudinal Depression Tracking
• Multi-Session Counseling Dialogues
• Standardized Session-Level Depression Labels

Innovation

• Longitudinal Depression Tracking
• Multi-Session Counseling Dialogues
• Empirically Informed State Construction