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RESEARCH ARTICLE
A privacy-preserving chatbot framework leveraging open-source large language models for patient simulation in psychotherapy training
Carmelo Fabio Longo1* ,
Pasquale Caponnetto2,3* ,
Paolo Marco Riela4 ,
Alessia Sangiorgio2 ,
Graziella Chiara Prezzavento2 ,
Noemi Maria Vitale2 ,
Eleonora Uccelli2 ,
Manila Caramazza2 ,
Idria Verduzzo2 ,
Carlotta Catania2 ,
Beatrice Eleonora De Leo2 ,
Giulia Schilirò2 ,
Chiara Farrauto2 ,
Maria Luisa Indiana2 ,
Cecilia Chiarenza5 ,
Daniele Francesco Santamaria6
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1 Institute of Science and Technologies of Cognition, National Research Council, Catania , Italy
2 Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Psychology, University of Catania, Catania , Italy
3 Center of Excellence for the Acceleration of Harm Reduction, University of Catania, Catania , Italy
4 Innonation S.r.l., Catania , Italy
5 Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Psychiatry Unit, University of Catania, Catania , Italy
6 Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Catania, Catania , Italy
HPR, 026290166 https://doi.org/10.36922/HPR026290166
Received: 17 July 2026 | Revised: 7 September 2026 | Accepted: 8 September 2026 | Published online: 10 September 2026
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Health and Psychological Well-being: Innovations, Mechanisms, and Interventions)
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Funding
This work was supported by FOSSR (Fostering Open Science in Social Science Research), funded by the European Union - NextGenerationEU under NRRP Grant agreement n. MUR IR0000008.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
References
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