BBC 6分钟英语学习 机器人治疗师

From BBC Learning English. Welcome to Six Minute English, the program where we explore an interesting topic and bring you six items of useful vocabulary.

I'm Catherine, and I'm Rob. I have a question for you.

Rob. How would you feel about having therapy

from a robot? Oh, I'm not too sure about that.

You'll need to tell me more.

But 1st things. 1st, the word therapy refers to a kind of treatment that helps someone feel better, including treatment for mental health issues.

Someone who delivers therapy is called a therapist.

We'll find out more about this robot therapist in just a moment.

But 1st Rob I've got a question for you about the scale of mental health issues globally.

So roughly, how many people do you think experience mental health issues at some point during their lifetime?

Is it A one in ten people?

B, one in four, or C?

One in three? I'll go for one in four, but I know whichever, whichever answer is right, it's a big issue.

How might a robot therapist help?

We're not talking about a robot in the Star Wars sense, so there's no flashing lights in mechanical arms rob it's actually an up in your smartphone that talks to you, and it's called wo bot.

Ah. So it has a sense of humor.

Woe means sadness. So this is a wo bot, not a robot, and it was developed by psychologist Doctor Alison Darcy from Stanford University in the US.

Here she is talking to the BBC radio program, all in the mind.

Well, after you start an initial conversation with the robot, and he'll take you through sort of what he can do and what he can't do, he'll just essentially check in with you every day and just give you the sort of figurative top on the shoulder and say, hey, claudia, how are you doing?

What's what's going on your day?

How do you feel? So if you say, like, I'm really, really stressed out, robot might offer to help talking through something.

Woe. Bot checks in with you every day and asks you how you are.

So here to check in with someone doesn't mean to register at a hotel with that person.

It's an informal way of saying, you talk to someone in order to report or find out information.

And this usage is more common in the United States.

So E.G., I can't meet you today, rob, but I'll check in with you tomorrow to see how the project's getting on.

So this robot checks in with you every day.

It tracks your mood and talks to you about your emotions using a technique called cognitive behavioral therapy.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a common therapeutic technique that helps people deal with problems by changing the way they think.

That all sounds great, but does robot actually work?

They've done some trials which show that it can be more effective than simply reading information about mental health, but they haven't compared robot to a real therapist due to ethical concerns.

Yes, it could be unethical to deny a real patient access to a human therapist for the sake of a trial.

Ethical basically means morally right. And another concern is privacy.

People who use apps like this are not protected by strong privacy laws.

Despite these fears, digital therapy is booming, and robot is just one of an increasing number of electronic services.

One reason for this could be using an app carries less stigma than maybe seeing a human therapist.

And stigma refers to the negative associations that people have about something, especially when these associations are not fair.

Even though mental health is now being talked about more openly than before, some people do still see mental health issues and therapy negatively.

Whatever you think of robot therapy, dr Darcy believes that in the modern world, people need to self reflect more, which means thinking deeply about yourself in order to understand the reasons behind your feelings.

The world that we live in right now is very noisy, particularly digitally.

Know, since we've had these little computers in our pockets with us everywhere we go, there aren't that many opportunities for real silence or self reflection.

You know, even a commute on that you might have been a moment to just take a 2nd to yourself.

But now that void can be filled, always with a super engaging content by looking at your phone.

Darcy believes that we don't have much time for self reflection because there are so many destructions in life, especially smartphones.

After discussing all this, would you actually try a therapy app like this?

Yes, I would. Actually. I think it might be quite helpful.

And how about the question you ask me at the beginning of the program?

How many people experience mental health issues?

And the answer was one in four, according to the World Health Organization and the World Federation for Mental Health.

But the who say that as many as two thirds of people never seek out from a health professional,

with a stigma being one of the main reasons.

And just there we had the word stigma again.

Let's now run through the other words we learned today.

So we had woe, meaning sadness.

I'm full of woe. Woe is me.

Maybe you need some therapy. That's the process of receiving treatment for a particular health issue, especially mental health illness.

And we had to check in with

someone after we finish this program, I need to check in with the boss about my new project.

We also had self reflection. That's the process of thinking deeply about yourself.

And finally, we had ethical If you describe something as ethical, you mean it's morally right lection and ethical.

That's it for this edition of 6 min English.

Will leave you to self reflect.

And after you've done that, do visit our Facebook, twitter, instagram and youtube pages, and of course, our website.

Bye for now. Bye. Bye.

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