Design Guidelines for a Virtual Coach for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Patients

Patients with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) often need to specify and relive their traumatic memories in therapy to relieve their disorder, which can be a very painful process. One new development is an internet-based guided self-therapy system (IBGST), where people work at home and a therapist is remotely involved. We propose to enrich an IBGST with a virtual coach to motivate and assist the patient during the therapy. We have created scenarios and requirements for an IBGST coach and discussed these with 10 experts in structured interviews. From these interviews, we have identified 10 important guidelines to assist with the design of a virtual coach assisting with PTSD treatment.