Design and Requirements Analysis of a Conversational Agent for Mental Health: A Qualitative Study Based on Interviews with Patients and Therapists

The collected information was analyzed and systematized from a requirements engineering perspective, enabling the definition of roles, functional and non-functional requirements, use cases, and Unified Modeling Language (UML) models. In addition, ethical considerations and clinical safety aspects were incorporated as cross-cutting design constraints.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Results:</b> The analysis enabled the identification of a structured set of functional requirements differentiated by role (Patient and Therapist), oriented toward basic emotional support, psychoeducation, monitoring, and the activation of crisis workflows, as well as non-functional requirements related to usability, privacy, informed consent, safety, reliability, and prevention of dependency.

These elements were integrated into a preliminary modular architecture and UML models describing the expected system behavior, establishing a traceable technical specification aligned with good software engineering practices.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Conclusion:</b> The findings allow the identification of the basic functionalities and requirements that future users need to interact with a conversational agent for mental health.

This work provides a framework applicable to the development of conversational solutions in sensitive domains, integrating principles from software engineering, mental health, and ethics in artificial intelligence.</p>