Call for Papers!

Sixth Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology: Reconciling Outcomes

NAACL 2019

June 6th

Minneapolis, MN

A closer union between clinical psychology and natural language processing introduces a new frontier for mental health at a time when supporting more people — and faster — is a financial and public health priority. There is a substantial and rising burden of mental health disorders and a significant shortage of resources available to prevent, diagnose, and treat them. For 5 years, CLPsych has brought together scientists and clinicians interested in improving the efficiency and reach of mental health treatment through scholarship and discussion focused on:

(a) objective, naturalistic behavioral data to improve upon the assessment of mental health needs provided by self-reported questionnaires — currently the most common method of assessment;

(b) providing language researchers a deeper understanding of the field of mental and neurological health and the needs of those currently responsible for diagnosis and treatment;

(c) increasing clinicians’ understanding of innovations in language technology and realistic expectations for implementation;

(d) the co-development of high-value NLP tools that can be deployed in the clinical community; and

(e) discussion of critical ethical questions concerning the opportunities and challenges created by human-technology interactions and analysis of the data generated.

CLPsych appeals to an interdisciplinary audience sharing findings, models, and methods to increase access to and scalability of mental health care.

This year’s workshop will focus on reconciling outcomes, a construct central to each of the main audiences participating in CLPsych; however, operationalized differently, with definitions ranging from treatment response to prediction accuracy. We encourage researchers to contribute papers that address different definitions of what constitutes an “outcome” in the intersection of language and clinical psychology, connected with focus areas (a-e) above. We are particularly interested in papers contributing to a discussion of how to align the outcomes that are most important to pursue as a community.

Paper submission instructions

A key goal of this workshop is to foster the conversation with clinicians, both at the workshop and when these papers are read in the future. We therefore include practicing clinicians and clinical researchers on our program committee, and the ability to communicate ideas, approaches, and results clearly to people who are not computational linguists will be as important as the quality of the work itself. This year we will be taking two categories of submission:

Standard papers should follow the guidelines for Long Papers in the NAACL 2019 call for papers at https://naacl2019.org/calls/papers/. These permit 8 pages of content plus references. In addition to papers describing algorithms, models, and experimentation, we are happy to receive carefully argued and supported position papers, insightful reviews or synthesis of relevant literature, or informative descriptions of real-world experiences deploying language technology (including prototypes) in relevant clinical settings.

Position papers can contain up to 4 pages of content, plus references of any length. These papers should clearly articulate a position, argument, or agenda that may be of value to the Workshop’s community. For example, authors with a clinical focus may have a position on ethical issues, promises and pitfalls of adopting technological approaches and digital mental health solutions, the connection between technology and interventions, or issues the CLPsych community should be considering with respect to specific conditions or populations. Position papers from either the technological or clinical communities are welcome and encouraged.

Submissions may be accepted for oral or poster presentation. All papers must conform to the Author Guidelines at https://naacl2019.org/calls/papers/. Please make sure to review NAACL’s recently updated policies regarding anonymity and double-blind review.

Important Dates

6 March 2019: Papers due (https://www.softconf.com/naacl2019/clpsych/)

27 March 2019: Notification of acceptance

5 April 2019: Camera-ready papers due

6 June 2019: Workshop!

Shared task. The workshop will include a shared task which will be announced separately in February 2019 with its own important dates.

Organizers (clpsych-organizers@googlegroups.com)

Kristy Hollingshead, IHMC

Kate Loveys, University of Auckland School of Medicine

Kate Niederhoffer, 7 Cups

Philip Resnik, University of Maryland

Rebecca Resnik, Rebecca Resnik and Associates, LLC

Workshop site: http://clpsych.org/NAACL conference site: http://naacl2019.org/