Using an XML Based System in Group Psychotherapy
Luís Duarte (Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa)
Luís Carriço (Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa)
Marco de Sá (Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa)
Abstract:
On the course of group psychotherapy sessions, both therapists (it is
common to find more than one therapist in a group psychotherapy session taking
on an observer role) and patients perform various activities. Therapists deliver
paper artifacts which patients have to fill-in during the sessions and then deliver
them again to the former to discuss the results. Our system aims at delivering
computational support to these activities by offering a set of tools and functionalities
to perform them with the aid of small mobile devices, laptops and large
public displays. Among the exchanged artifacts we can distinguish questionnaires,
questionnaire filling-in logs, thought registries and personal notes shared by
the therapists. These artifacts are generated with the aid of our XML specification,
oriented to handle questionnaire and log construction and interpretation.
Although the system uses an XML specification to handle data, a central relational
database is also used to store it, as the system may be part of a large clinical
facility.
A Communication Server is responsible to ensure the flow of communication
in the system, receiving and forwarding messages from / to the correct
senders / recipients. The Server is complemented by an important feature which
enables session workload distribution: a message subscription system. With this
module, therapists are allowed to configure which message types they want to
receive or whose messages are forwarded to them. The Communication Server
is therefore responsible for keeping an updated table with the current subscription
settings for the session. When it receives a message, the subscription table is
consulted in order to correctly forward the message to the desired recipients. The
subscription table can be modified at run time during a session. The exchanged
XML messages follow a simple structure comprised by "From", "To", "Session",
"Operation", "Extra" and "Body" fields. While the first two fields" purposes are
self explanatory, the "Session" tag refers to the identification number of the session
the messages belong to.
The "Operation" tag describes the message"s type
(e.g. a database request). This field can be complemented by the "Extra" tag
which can offer additional information about the message (e.g. the forwarding
of a questionnaire or log file). Finally, the "Body" field contains the actual payload
of the message which can be plain text or full XML questionnaires, result
files or log files. Some variations of this schema can be used in setting up the
subscriptions. This XML message and file based approach promotes flexibility
and mobility to handle different group therapy scenarios, despite the presence of
a central database.