Abstract Background In clinical practice of psychiatry, elderly individuals often experience significant psychological stress due to social isolation, and in severe cases, it can also trigger delayed onset mental disorders. Previous studies have mainly improved symptoms through medication and cognitive interventions, but research on enhancing positive emotional and social functioning in the elderly has shown that a single medical approach is difficult to fully repair patients’ sense of social connection. Previous research has shown that the lack of social interaction significantly accelerates cognitive decline and exacerbates depressive mood. Based on this, the study introduces positive psychology theory into the field of psychotherapy and designs a social human-computer interaction system to provide a low-risk digital intervention approach for elderly mental rehabilitation. This achievement has important clinical significance for alleviating loneliness in the elderly population and constructing integrated rehabilitation programs. Methods The study selected 80 elderly patients with mild depression or social withdrawal who met the diagnostic criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). Divide all subjects into a control group and an experimental group, with 40 people in each group. The control group received routine mental care and health education, while the experimental group introduced a social human-computer interaction system based on positive psychology for intervention. The expected duration is 16 weeks, with 3 sessions per week and each session lasting 1 hour. The system design includes modules such as advantage check-in, positive storytelling, and virtual social communities, mainly guiding patients to reshape their social motivation through positive feedback. The study used multidimensional scales for pre-test and post test evaluation, including Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15), and Social Disability Screening Schedule (SDSS), to verify the actual effectiveness of the interactive system in psychotherapy. Results Analysis shows that the GDS-15 score of the experimental group decreased from 10.42 points to 5.15 points, significantly better than the control group (p.05). In the SDSS social function assessment, the score of the experimental group was only 6.42 points, a decrease of nearly half compared to before the intervention, reflecting a significant improvement in patients’ social withdrawal behavior. In addition, the intervention effect of the experimental group on PANSS negative symptoms was significant, decreasing from 22.15 points to 14.28 points, and the difference was statistically significant (p.05). The control group only dropped from 22.30 points to 20.15 points. Positive psychology intervention can effectively activate patients’ emotional motivation. Discussion The social human-computer interaction system based on positive psychology has excellent application value in the rehabilitation process of mild mental disorders in the elderly. This system can significantly alleviate depressive mood and effectively repair damaged social functions, making it highly feasible as a non-pharmacological adjuvant therapy. Future research directions can explore long-term follow-up mechanisms to verify the persistence of systemic efficacy. At the same time, efforts can be made to integrate biofeedback technology to monitor real-time changes in patients’ physiological and electrical indicators during the interaction process.
Yue Zhang (Sun,) studied this question.