@inproceedings{gligorovic-etal-2026-howd,
    title = "``How{'}d You Type That So Fast?'' A Descriptive Analysis of Counselor Message Text Reuse in Text-Based Crisis Counseling",
    author = "Gligorovic, Stevi  and
      Schou, Jens Kristian  and
      Imel, Zac  and
      Kious, Brent",
    editor = "Zirikly, Aya  and
      Bar, Kfir  and
      MacAvaney, Sean  and
      Ireland, Molly  and
      Ophir, Yaakov  and
      Atzil-Slonim, Dana  and
      Varadarajan, Vasudha  and
      Bedrick, Steven  and
      Desmet, Bart",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology ({CLP}sych 2026)",
    month = jul,
    year = "2026",
    address = "San Diego, California, USA",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl-workshops/2026.clpsych-1.1/",
    pages = "1--11",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-421-7",
    abstract = "Suicide is a major public health concern, underscoring the importance of understanding communication practices used in crisis intervention. Text-based crisis services are increasingly used, yet little is known about how counselors construct messages across encounters. One understudied feature of this setting is counselor text reuse, or the repeated use of identical or highly similar message content across different clients. Although reuse may support efficiency and consistency, it may raise questions about how personalised responses are across counselors. This study provides a descriptive analysis of counselor text reuse in a large dataset of 4.7 million messages of real-time text-based crisis counseling conversations. Across 136 counselors, mean message similarity was very low, indicating little overall text reuse for most counselors. However, 103 counselors showed at least one instance of detected reuse, and a smaller subset demonstrated more consistent reuse. Reuse was also positively associated with counselor encounter volume across measures of reuse. Frequently reused longer passages primarily involved structured coping-oriented or psychoeducational content, such as coping strategies, grounding exercises, self-care tips, and relaxation techniques. The findings suggest that counselor text reuse increased with encounter volume, but average levels of reuse were low across counselors and they provide a foundation for future work examining associations with service delivery and client outcomes."
}