Skip to main content
Peer-reviewed Authoritative

Beyond Engagement: A Multidimensional Framework to Evaluate the Safe Development of Agentic AI in Mental Health

Introduces a nine-domain framework for evaluating the safe development of agentic AI systems used in mental health — spanning clinical validity, relational risk, and regulatory compliance — and applies it to eight real-world tools to expose gaps between conversational fluency and user safety.

Publisher

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Springer Nature) — AI for Clinical Applications

Published

22 Sept 2025

Added

1 week ago

Key Findings

  • Defines nine evaluation domains for agentic mental-health AI, including a dedicated relational-risk domain.
  • Applied to eight real-world tools, the most popular agents often lack basic safeguards while clinically validated solutions are underused.
  • Calls for structured oversight, external validation, and public awareness of agentic mental-health AI.

Methodology Notes

Peer-reviewed book chapter (LNCS, 'AI for Clinical Applications', Springer Nature; DOI 10.1007/978-3-032-06004-4_8; online 2025-09-22, print 2026). Framework development plus application to eight deployed tools. Springer landing page is auth-walled to automated fetchers; title, authors, venue, and date verified via Crossref DOI metadata, with a Zenodo supplementary record (10.5281/zenodo.15797144).

Authors

Beatriz Garcia Santa Cruz, Carlos Vega, Philip Santangelo, Venkata Satagopam

Tags

agentic-aimental-healthevaluation-frameworkrelational-risksafeguards

Cite This

APA

Beatriz Garcia Santa Cruz et al. (2025). Beyond Engagement: A Multidimensional Framework to Evaluate the Safe Development of Agentic AI in Mental Health. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Springer Nature) — AI for Clinical Applications. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-032-06004-4_8